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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25737829">Of Dreams that Frighten</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigrades_will_rule_the_world/pseuds/tardigrades_will_rule_the_world'>tardigrades_will_rule_the_world</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, How Do I Tag, I lowkey ship everyone with Severus but tbh he'll probably end up single, Multi, NO ONE KNOWS, Or is it really even time travel?, Time Travel Fix-It, even I don't know, or will he</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:09:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>67,627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25737829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigrades_will_rule_the_world/pseuds/tardigrades_will_rule_the_world</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape died protecting Lily's son—or so he thought. He wakes up eleven again, confusing what was with what could be. Through his memories, which may or may not come to pass, he must work to change Fate before history as he remembers unfolds again. Pairing undecided. Crossposted from fanfiction.net</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>94</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Beginning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last thing Severus ever saw were Lily's eyes. Though they were embedded in the face of the man he had hated and the boy he had sworn to protect, they were still her eyes, green as forest pools, green as jealousy. But jealousy was irrelevant now, because Severus could feel the world grow more distant. There was darkness creeping up around him, drawing him down deeply into its embrace. He let himself be borne away, and prayed that there could be such a thing as mercy for those like him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Severus woke wide-eyed and frightened, trembling in the dark. His gaze slid wildly about the room, trying to determine where he was—he looked up and recognized the spider webbing of cracks on the ceiling. This was his room. <em>His</em> room, from Spinner’s End, the house where he had grown up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It had only been a dream.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Home,” he whispered, the noise barely escaping his vocal cords, but his voice sounded strange to his own ears, tongue moving clumsily around his teeth. His mouth tasted of copper. He swallowed, but the cloying film didn’t go away. Water. He needed water. With some effort, he untwisted himself from his thread-bare covers. But his attention fixed on the one quilt that wasn’t shabby and worn.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He stared at it, for a second not remembering it. When he did, an unexpected emotion caught at his chest. Lily’s mother had made it for him, had worked on it for the better part of a year. It had been a birthday gift. It was one of the most precious things he owned. He didn’t know why, then, the sight of it made him feel bruised inside, tender. A single sentence floated through his mind. <em>I never meant for Lily to die.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It was only a dream,” he whispered. But even as the words crossed his lips, he remembered cradling Lily’s body to his chest, weeping bitter tears into her ember-bright hair, prostrating himself in front of a man with half-moon glasses, a long white beard, and a look of utter sorrow. He remembered blackness burnt into his skin, a snake and a skull branded there forever.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Severus dropped the quilt on the bed and darted for the bathroom. Though he hurried, he trod lightly over the floor and was careful to be quiet with the door, because it wouldn’t do to wake his father if the man was home yet. That would be a lashing or a lecture, depending on his degree of drunkenness. Drunker was better. If he woke his mother—well, he would regret that even more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Severus made it to the bathroom and flipped on the light, praying that it would work. The wiring in Spinners’ End was unreliable at best and outright dangerous at worst. He had wondered, sometimes, if it was because of his magic, if his magic might have leaked over and tweaked the flow of electricity. But Lily had told him that her lights always worked, so Severus attributed it to lazy electricians.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After a few moments and much indecision, the light flickered on, and Severus turned toward the grimy mirror, frightened by what he might see. He came nose-to-nose with his own reflection, sallow-faced and too skinny, lank-haired and hungry-eyed. The knots in his belly loosed and he grinned in purely reflexive relief, even though his reflection was nothing to smile at.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But at least this reflection was still that of a child and not that of a haggard, tight-lipped man who seemed as though he couldn’t remember how to laugh.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“It was only a dream,” he murmured, watching his reflection’s mouth shape the words. “It was only a dream, it was only a dream.” Maybe if he said it enough, he could forget the aching intensity and raw heartbreak that he remembered now, that he hadn’t known before he’d gone to sleep the night before.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“Severus? What are you doing up this early?”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus flinched and turned around slowly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I didn’t mean to wake you up, Mum. I’m sorry.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Eileen Prince was not a beautiful woman on the best of days. Her face was long, her hair was a lackluster brown, and her mouth was perpetually set in a sulky look, even when she was laughing. She was especially not attractive now, having just gotten up from bed. But though she had dark circles carved under her eyes, a ratty old shawl wrapped about her shoulders, and bare, knobby-toed feet, when she smiled a tired smile at Severus, he felt as though everything could be right in the world.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“It’s not so early for me, love. It’s nearly five. But why are you awake?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Severus rubbed his arms and glanced away. It had been one thing to run to his mother when he was a child. But he was eleven now, and to tell her that he had had a <em>nightmare</em>? His masculine pride couldn’t allow it. “I drank too much water last night.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>His mother arched an eyebrow. “Strange, then, that I didn’t hear a flush,” she observed. “And when I came in here, you were looking in the mirror.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>He had never been able to lie to his mum. He cast his gaze at the floor, trying to think of something to say. She rescued him from his all-too-obvious thoughts of diversions, gently touching him on the shoulder. “I’m going to get dressed for work and make tea. And then you can tell me what has you so wound up.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus made the tea. He sat at the kitchen table and imagined creatures out of the scratches on the surface. There were a lot of scratches—almost to the extent that the entire tabletop was one big scratch—and so there were a lot of creatures that he could imagine. But then his mother came downstairs in her work uniform and he had to cease imagining for the time being. She cradled her mug in one hand and reached across the table for one of his with the other. “So what’s this about then?”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus hesitated. Relented. Hesitated again. But his mother surely wouldn’t make fun of him, especially not if he didn’t call it a <em>nightmare</em>. “I had a dream.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Eileen waited.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus drew in a shaky breath, and his grip on his mother’s hand became tighter. “It started with the train ride to Hogwarts. It—the train—it looked exactly like you’d told me, all red and gold, with the lettering on the side. We went with the Evanses in their car because you’d received notice that the Floo system at the station was going to be down for repairs. We sat in the back with Lily. Petunia didn’t come, even though Mrs. Evans wanted her to.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>And then we got to the station, and went to Platform 9 ¾. Lily caught her jumper on something and ripped it near the hem. She was upset but you told her the house elves would fix it for her. Then we said goodbye and got on the train.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus didn’t know why he was telling his mother every little detail. He prided himself on his concise storytelling, but there had been a weight to this dream that he wasn’t comfortable carrying by himself. Normally, he would have told Lily instead of his mother, because his mum already had too much to think about, working two jobs to counteract her husband’s worthlessness. But Lily was too central to the plot of the story to tell, and she might pick up on the fact that Severus’ dream-self had been so desperately in love with her that he had died in order to redeem himself to his memory of her.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus drew a breath and continued. “A few hours into the train ride, these two boys came into the compartment with us. One of them had ridiculous puffy hair and glasses, and the other was wearing a shirt with a band name on it. They’d come in to talk with Lily, not me, but I got into the conversation anyhow when they mentioned Houses. They both wanted to be in Gryffindor, like Lily. They were all really excited about it. But then the boy with the glasses asked me what House I wanted, and I said Slytherin. And—he just got angry. He tried to convince me that only evil people went to Slytherin. I got mad and insulted him, and we started yelling at each other so loud that one of the prefects made them go back to their own compartment.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>When we finally made it to Hogwarts, we didn’t take carriages like you said. We went on boats across the lake. One boy almost fell in. Then Lily was Sorted into Gryffindor with the two boys from the train, and I went to Slytherin. After that, I didn’t really have Lily anymore, except for a few classes and some study times, and those boys became my enemies.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus swallowed and looked down at the table. “I started to hate Hogwarts because of them. And there was a Dark Lord coming to power. Lily abandoned me, and I joined him. Lily married the puffy-haired boy and had a son. She died because of information I had given to the Dark Lord.” His breath was getting faster. “There was a prophecy—her son was the only one who could defeat the Dark Lord. I swore allegiance to Dumbledore and took the Potions position at Hogwarts to keep her son safe, because I owed that to Lily. Then I saved him several times and I made him hate me, and then I died protecting him.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“Oh, Severus.” His mum stroked the pad of her thumb across his knuckles.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“No, but there’s more, Mum. It was like it actually happened. That’s why I was looking in the mirror, to make sure that I was still <em>me</em>.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>He looked up to see her studying him. “It was probably just a dream,” she finally said. “The Princes never had strong Seer blood.” She squeezed his hand and let him go, getting up from the table. “Are you anxious about going to Hogwarts? It’s in a week, that might be why.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“<em>No</em>,” Severus snapped, and immediately felt awful. “Sorry, but, it’s just, it didn’t feel like a dream. I know what dreams feel like.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Eileen nodded. “We’ll have to wait and see, then. We do need to go to Diagon Alley soon, for your supplies. Maybe Saturday…” She trailed off, slipping her wand from her sleeve. An apple floated over</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Severus’ head to her hand. “<em>Tempus</em>,” Eileen said firmly, and glanced at the numbers that drew themselves in thin air. “Severus, I’ve got to run. Your father came in a few hours ago, you won’t want to be in the house when he wakes.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus nodded. It was the natural progression of things—Tobias Snape gets drunk, Tobias Snape sleeps it off, Tobias Snape takes out his hangover on any bystanders. “I’ll stay at Lily’s house,” he promised, then paused. “Or maybe I’ll stay at the library.”<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Eileen kissed his forehead, handed him an apple, and ushered him up the stairs to get dressed. When he came down, she had taken the Floo to her job cooking breakfast at a popular wizarding café, after which she would change into her robes and act as the secretary of a small, struggling wizarding legal firm.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Severus finished his apple and slipped out the front door, not bothering to lock it; they had nothing of value. He would go to the library today, he decided. Maybe he could bury himself in the smell of ink and paper and forget about the memories that weren’t his but that were pervading every crevice, nook, and cranny of his mind. Maybe he could forget about the dream for a little while, and then maybe he could pass it off as nothing more than the figment of an overactive imagination.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>It was worth a shot.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I started this fic years ago and abandoned it around chapter seven. Now I'd like to finish it, so hopefully there's improvement in both writing and plot starting from chapter eight onward. If nothing else, the chapters got longer. Quantity over quality, amirite? </p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for reading. I appreciate every review.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Wand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They did go to Diagon Alley on Saturday. Eileen had managed to jigger her work schedule to get a half-day off, so she roused Severus at the ungodly hour of five o’clock, ignoring his grumbled complaints. “Is anything even <em>open</em> this early in the morning?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. He kept his volume low because his father was upstairs sleeping off yet another hangover.</p><p> </p><p>“Gringotts is open at all hours of the day,” Eileen replied, attacking her son’s collar and trying to make it lie as it was supposed to. They were both dressed in their nicer clothes, which meant only that they fit approximately to their bodies and had a conspicuous absence of mending. “That visit will take about an hour, and the rest of the shops open at seven. We’ll want to get in and get out as quickly as possible.”</p><p> </p><p>There were many things that Severus could have said in response to that. He could have asked if his mother was ashamed to be seen with her half-blood son, if she was ashamed to be seen herself by the members of the society that she had fallen from. He even could have asked if she was all right, because he’d heard yelling late last night, and this morning she had a patch of concealer carefully applied around her eye. But he didn’t, because he knew what she would say. <em>Of course I’m not ashamed of you, Severus. Of course I don’t care what they think. Of course I’m all right. Your father just gets too excited sometimes, that’s all.</em></p><p> </p><p>Severus was no fool. He knew that she was trying to protect him from reality. But he heard her crying in her bedroom when she thought he was asleep. He had noticed her give her food to him in the times when his father had been accumulating debts of the sort that they couldn’t buy groceries. Two years ago, when they were so far behind on the mortgage that they were going to lose the house, Eileen had come home with wide, dry eyes, a bare spot on her finger where her ring had been, a gift from her father before things had soured between them. Severus saw it but didn’t comment, because he knew his mother worked so very hard to keep him oblivious, and if she knew she had failed it would be no fault but his own.</p><p> </p><p>These were heavy thoughts for an eleven-year-old, so he thrust them away and followed his mother to the fireplace. In the earliest year of her marriage, before things went to an alcohol-flavored hell, one of Eileen’s stipulations had been a connection to the Floo network, as most wizarding families had. It had been her most decisive victory in her entire marriage. She dug in a drawer and found the powder, tossing a pinch on the fire and gesturing Severus forward. He took a breath and made sure to enunciate clearly as he spoke. Floo accidents were few and far-between, but people who mumbled were disproportionately victims of unintended destinations. Severus did not want to start his day like that if he could help it. The flames turned green and he stepped through.</p><p> </p><p>Moments later and miles away, he was quite proud that he didn’t crumple to his knees and vomit like he wanted to. Instead he staggered away from the mantle unsteadily, clutching at his stomach. In the next instance his mother was at his side, steadying him, laying a cool, callused hand at the back of his neck. Until their magic matured, children tended to experience side effects when traveling by Floo, and Severus was no exception.</p><p> </p><p>After a few heartbeats, Severus was able to straighten up and look around. The Leaky Cauldron was not terribly impressive, as first impressions go. The only person there other than themselves was the man behind the counter, polishing some glasses with a dishcloth.</p><p> </p><p>“’Lo, Tom,” Eileen called over her shoulder, steering Severus towards the door. Tom nodded back silently, not looking up from his work. Outside, Diagon Alley was lit mainly by streetlight and by the individual lanterns mounted beside shops’ doorways, though there was the odd window already lit from within, a rectangle of warmth spilling onto the sidewalk. Eileen walked with purpose, turning corners without hesitation. Severus trailed behind her, wondering what the Alley looked like normally, filled with people and parcels. They passed by a used bookstore, and he worked hard not to salivate too visibly. His mother had told him about the four Houses of Hogwarts, though she hadn’t gone into the specifics of the Sorting Ceremony. She had been a Slytherin, but she suspected Severus would be a Ravenclaw on account of his love for books. Severus hadn’t bothered to correct her. He recognized that knowledge was useful only when applied correctly—Slytherin to the core.</p><p> </p><p>Then he remembered a dream he had had, venomous accusations from a puffy-haired bespectacled boy passing through his mind. He fought off a shiver and ran to catch up with his mother. They climbed the stairs together, passing by the goblin at the doors. Inside Gringotts, which was almost as empty as the Leaky Cauldron had been, his mother had a quiet discussion with the teller and turned to him. “Wait here.”</p><p> </p><p>“Can’t I come with you?” he asked, stung, and then he realized. His mother didn’t want him to see how little she had in her vault. “I’ll wait.”</p><p> </p><p>He saw the tension in her shoulders decease significantly. “I shouldn’t be too long. Keep out of trouble. Don’t move from that bench, and keep quiet.” She disappeared into another corridor at the heels of yet another goblin.</p><p> </p><p>Boredom and Severus did not go well together, and fifteen minutes of sitting on an uncushioned wooden bench staring at the ceiling proved to be too much. He debated asking the teller for some sort of reading material, like a blank contract. He’d never had the chance to dissect legalese, much less that of the Goblin variety, and if he didn’t do something soon, his brain was going to liquefy and dribble out his ears. He held on for five more minutes, and gave in.</p><p> </p><p>The teller looked at him skeptically. “Why would you wish to read a contract?”<br/>
Severus shrugged. “Practice. I’m only eleven, so I can’t fill out anything and have it be binding, but I thought it might be a good idea to get used to the formatting and the language of the documents.”</p><p> </p><p>The goblin looked approving, if a goblin ever looked approvingly at a human. “Indeed,” he said, passing an inch of papers bound with gold thread over the counter. “Return this to me before you leave.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus almost staggered under the weight of the papers, but made it back to his seat. He began dissecting the contract, which had something to do with the acquisition of goods gained from conquest from a wizard fighting on behalf of a warlord sometime in the twelfth century. At first, the contract seemed as though it heavily favored the wizard, but, while reading the fine print, Severus discovered a multitude of requirements that made his head spin. The warlord received a tenth of the flat bounty from any job, but then he also received jewels that reflected purple light (but only on Tuesdays), goblets with a circumference of no greater than 14 inches (but only if they had three handles), bracelets that had some sort of owl emblem (but only if they did not have a clasp)…the list of technicalities went on for pages and pages. But the very last thing that the warlock demanded was the entire haul of enchanted artefacts, with no exceptions.</p><p> </p><p>It was all very cleverly, densely worded, but Severus thought that it must have been successful through length alone; few people would want to wade through pages upon pages of nonsensical requirements. He stood and returned the contract to the teller just before his mother returned, pale and resolute. He barely managed to nod his thanks before she hustled him out the door. “Are you all right?” he asked cautiously.</p><p> </p><p>She grimaced. “It’s those carts the goblins use. I’ve never gotten used to them.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus did not regret missing the cart ride. Among other things, such as his unfortunate nose and his long, spidery hands, he had inherited his mother’s propensity for motion sickness. “Where are we going?” he asked.</p><p> </p><p>She pointed ahead. “Ollivanders. I thought we might get your wand first.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus wanted to protest. Wands were expensive, and wands from Ollivanders even more so. Eileen saw his look. “Severus, don’t fight me on this. You need a good wand if you want to be successful at all. We can compromise on the quality of other things, but not on this.” She spoke in a whisper; Diagon Alley was slowly coming to life. Shopkeepers were throwing open their doors, sweeping off their slivers of sidewalk, setting up some of their wares outside. There was beginning to be foot traffic.</p><p> </p><p>Severus wanted to argue, but he looked at the lines around his mother’s mouth, the circles around her eyes, the bruise that Muggle concealer couldn’t fully hide. So instead he nodded, and they entered Ollivanders together. At first the shop appeared empty, but suddenly a man whom Severus presumed to be Ollivander sprang out from behind the shelves.</p><p> </p><p>“Good day, good day,” he said to Severus, speaking very rapidly. “Here to be fitted for a wand, are you?” He seemed to notice Eileen for the first time. “Eileen Prince, if I remember correctly. Yes, that’s right. Black walnut and unicorn hair, ten and three-quarter inches. Rather bendy, I recall. Well-attuned to inner conflict.”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen smiled tightly at Ollivander. “That’s right, but I’m Eileen Snape now. We’re here for a wand for Severus.”</p><p> </p><p>“Indeed, indeed,” Ollivander murmured, scrutinizing Severus carefully. He plucked a box from the pile behind him and thrust it at Severus. “Elm and unicorn hair, nine inches. Give it a wave.”</p><p> </p><p>As soon as Severus took it out, Ollivander snatched it back. “No good, no good.” He dug out another box. “Dogwood and phoenix feather, twelve and a half inches.” Severus had barely gotten the box open before Ollivander wanted him to try another.</p><p> </p><p>Soon it seemed as though he would have to try every wand in the store. Strangely, Ollivander seemed to become more cheerful as more wands rejected him. “You’re a strange one, aren’t you? Very good, very good. Most people only try two or three boxes—try this.” He passed Severus a wand of cypress and dragon heartstring. Rejection.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, Ollivander stopped and gazed thoughtfully at Severus. “I think I know what you need,” he said, and disappeared into the back of the store. He reappeared holding yet another box. “I made this years ago. Birch and dragon heartstring, thirteen inches even. Birch wands are very particular about who they pair with, you see, so I only have three of them in stock. Good for spellwork of all types, but particularly things that require precision.” He offered the wand to Severus.</p><p> </p><p>Severus closed his fingers over the smooth, cool wood and immediately felt a tingle that he hadn’t with any of the other wands. He waved it, and he <em>felt</em> his magic responding, traveling down his arms and through his fingertips. The wand’s tip exploded in sparks.</p><p> </p><p>Ollivander practically beamed. “As I thought.” He grew more serious. “Few carry birch wands,” he said, “but those who do are stubborn. They often have strong personalities and care little for the opinions of others. They are very selective with their loyalty, but once it is earned it is kept unto death.” He caught Severus’ free hand and stared into his face. “Remember that, child, and be careful to whom you give your heart.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus had goosebumps, and not only because there was a draft. He remembered his dream, of staring into emerald eyes as the dark overtook him, and shivered while the adults discussed payment over his head. <em>Be careful to whom you give your heart.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading. I appreciate every review &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Puppy Crush</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Severus’ life had become a countdown. Four days until Hogwarts, three days until Hogwarts. But two days before the Hogwarts Express was scheduled to stop at Platform 9 ¾, his shield of perpetual denial shattered once again.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had packed his shabby old things into his mother’s shabby old trunk, had said goodbye to the people he saw regularly (mostly the librarians), and had mentally prepared himself for nine months of separation from his mother. Sitting at the kitchen table trying to read <em>Hogwarts: A History</em> and trying to ignore the ever-present squirm of excitement in his stomach, he saw a letter shoot out of the Floo. He picked it up and turned it over curiously. It had a bright maroon return address stamped in the upper corner, but no mailing address. “Mum, can I open it?” Eileen, sitting with her mending at the kitchen table, made an absent noise which Severus took as consent, so he slid his thumb under the envelope flap and peeled it open.</p><p> </p><p>When he read the letter, he wished he hadn’t. He stared in mute horror at the text, a public service announcement that the wizarding Floo at the train station would be down for repairs for the next week. Students returning to Hogwarts were advised to find some other method of transportation to Platform 9 ¾. His face felt numb. When he tried to swallow, he couldn’t. “Mum,” he croaked hoarsely, holding out the letter.</p><p> </p><p>She lunged for it, obviously expecting bad news. She read it twice, scanning the paragraphs rapidly, before she exhaled a long breath and looked up at Severus. “It just means that we’ll have to go with the Evanses in their car, love. It’s nothing to worry about.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus stared blankly at her. “It came true,” he said. “That means that everything else will come true too. I’m going to kill Lily.”</p><p> </p><p>He could tell that his mother did not at first understand what he was saying, because when she did realize, all of the color drained from her lips. Her fingers tightened on the letter, crinkling it. “Are you sure that this was as you dreamed it?” He didn’t answer; from her expression, he knew that she remembered exactly what he had told her that early morning. “Oh, <em>Severus</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>They sat there in silence. Severus was contemplating moving to the States, because if he wasn’t near Lily, he couldn’t hurt her, and he hadn’t ever left Britain in the dream—</p><p> </p><p>Eileen took a deep breath and gripped his hand. “It could be coincidence. What happened next?”</p><p> </p><p>“We went with the Evanses in their car. Petunia stayed behind. She and Mrs. Evans had a huge row about it. We sat in the back with Lily. Lily ripped her jumper getting on the train. You told her that the house elves would fix it. When we were on the train, two boys came into our compartment to talk to Lily. They wanted to be in Gryffindor, like her, and they didn’t like that I wanted to be a Slytherin. One of them had glasses and the other had a band shirt,” Severus recited dully. “Should I go on?”</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t have to think about the details of his dream. They were branded into his mind. He remembered everything from the way the leather seats in the Evanses’ car had creaked when he shifted his weight to the way that his own body had locked into death throes. He had read books on the human brain: it filled in details that were missing, but Severus doubted that it could fix up a dream so thoroughly on a rush order. There had been things that he had never before heard about: the Chamber of Secrets, horcruxes, Sectumsempra. And furthermore, he distinctly remembered having created Sectumsempra himself. He had created a spell to kill.</p><p> </p><p>And kill it almost had, he remembered. Lily’s son in a bathroom with water on the floor; a boy with white hair stained red. Defiance. Why had he created such a thing? How often had he used it to kill? He was afraid to look into the dream for answers.</p><p> </p><p>“Severus? Severus?” Eileen waved a hand in front of her son’s face and he started. She put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed perhaps more tightly than was comfortable. “Severus, you are one of the most responsible children that I have ever met. You shouldn’t have to be—”and here her voice cracked a little bit—“but you are. I trust you. I trust that you’re not lying to me. When you go on the train on Wednesday, I want you to take note of what’s happening. If it really was just a dream, tell me, and I’m sure we’ll both sleep better at night. But if it does happen as you dreamed it—”here she swallowed—“we need to tell someone.”</p><p> </p><p>“But who?” Severus asked plaintively. “What could anyone do to—”</p><p> </p><p>And then he remembered an old man with kind, twinkling eyes. “I’ll go to Headmaster Dumbledore,” he said without the barest hint of hesitation. The old man had always been kind to him, even after what he had done—Severus shook his head sharply. No. He hadn’t done anything yet, and he was going to make sure that he never would.</p><p> </p><p>Eileen hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s wise, love. What could the Headmaster do?”</p><p> </p><p>“Everything,” Severus replied. “There’s a war coming, you know. He knows it. He won’t believe me at first, but I’ll be able to prove it to him. He’ll have to take me seriously, because he’s not the sort to think I fabricated everything to gain his trust.” He didn’t mention that he was planning on letting Dumbledore poke around in his mind, if he needed to.</p><p> </p><p>His mother looked alarmed. “Severus, what do you mean? There’s no war coming.”</p><p> </p><p>“But there is, Mum,” Severus replied softly. “It’s coming. I want what I saw to be a dream more than anything, but I know that it’s not. I know things that I shouldn’t, and I remember people that I’ve never met. Either I’m going crazy or I saw the future.”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen bowed her head. “The Princes never had strong Seer blood, Severus. At most, they could predict things with more accuracy than most other people. That passed me by, I think.” The last part she said quietly. “Magic is passed down through bloodlines. You couldn’t have gotten it from me, it just doesn’t work that way. So there are only two other options. Either your father is a Squib or descended from a Squib from a family with a history of strong Seers, or you developed the ability independently. It’s most likely that your father is the reason, but magic does strange things in the name of love.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus was baffled. “Love?”</p><p> </p><p>“Everything that you told me happened in your dream had Lily at the middle of it. You love Lily. She was the first friend you ever had, even if the two of you did get off to a rocky start. Your motivation in the dream was to protect her, and, when that failed, to protect her son in her memory. It could be that, sensing what would cause you pain and lead you on a path to ruin, your magic sent you a warning. And that might be the end of it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Either way,” Severus said stubbornly, “I saw the future.”</p><p> </p><p>“Perhaps you did or perhaps you didn’t. Perhaps you only saw what might have happened without the warning. Perhaps now that you know there is a danger, the danger will have passed.” Eileen leaned forward and cupped her son’s face in her work-roughened hands. “We won’t know until you go to Hogwarts, love. If you speak to Headmaster Dumbledore, I want to be there. Send me an owl.” She kissed his forehead and picked up her mending again.</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ brain was buzzing with all of the possibilities. He had to plan. He had to make plans, and he had to make contingency plans, and then he had to make contingency plans for his contingency plans. He had a wealth of information <em>now</em>, but how long would it still be viable? Every time he did something that was different than he had dreamed, he was altering the timeline a little bit. But he didn’t know whether it was enough that Lily would be saved, and every time he altered the timeline, there was less information that he could use.</p><p> </p><p>Lily couldn’t die. Not this time.</p><p> </p><p>He had to make sure that she got out alive.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He’d excused himself from the table, mind whirring. Now he was wandering through Cokeworth in no particular direction. Grime crunched under his shoes, so he instinctively veered toward the less industrial parts of the town, where the smog was far thinner and the houses were nicer. He paid little attention to his surroundings, which was odd for him. He was still too preoccupied with his newfound mission in life.</p><p> </p><p>Briefly, he wondered whether he was so desperate to keep Lily alive just so that he wouldn’t be suffocating in guilt as his older dream-self had been. He banished the thought immediately. Lily was his friend, his first friend, his only friend. Maybe their friendship wasn’t as strong as he would have liked, since it hadn’t survived the interference of the puffy-haired boy, but Severus would still do nearly anything for her.</p><p> </p><p>He remembered her repudiation of him and ice curled down his spine. Maybe he had loved Lily more than Lily had ever loved him. It was not inconceivable. Lily had her sister and her parents and her friends at the school she went to in the nicest district of Cokeworth. Severus had only his mother and Lily and the library full of freedom.</p><p> </p><p>Years ago, he had seen her doing magic out of the corner of his eye and had been so, so delighted to have a magical friend that he hadn’t eaten for nearly three days.</p><p> </p><p>Then, when he had first approached her, she had snubbed him. Her parents had been thrilled; they’d embraced Eileen as a guide to the magical world. But even now, Severus sometimes wondered what Lily thought of him.</p><p> </p><p>He glanced up briefly out of his thoughts and realized that his feet had taken him to the park where he had introduced himself to her for the first time. He prayed that she didn’t appear and took a seat on the swings, moodily pushing himself back and forth. What to do, what to do.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t reemerge from his head again until he heard footsteps, too late to leave without letting her know that he was avoiding her. She sat in the swing to his right.</p><p> </p><p>“Severus!” she cried, voice as bright as her hair. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever. Can you believe that we’re going to Hogwarts in two days? We went to Diagon Alley yesterday, we should’ve gone sooner because it was so crowded, but Daddy only had today off of work and he wanted to come with us. Petunia didn’t come, she should have, it would have been fun. I got a wand! Willow and unicorn hair, good for charms, good for healing. I think I might want to become a healer. What about you, what was your wand like?”</p><p> </p><p>“Birch and dragon heartstring,” Severus mumbled. “Good for things requiring precision.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, that suits you. I got a kitten! He’s white with gray paws and a gray tail. I’m going to name him Lisianthus.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s a type of flower,” Severus pointed out.</p><p> </p><p>Lily waved a graceful hand in dismissal. Even at eleven she was beautiful, anyone could see that. “Only you would know that. How many times have you read through your potions textbook?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus colored slightly. “Three.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily laughed, a bubbling, happy noise like a brook. Even her laugh was beautiful. “Oh,” she said, “only you, Severus. Are you trying to learn everything before we even get there?”</p><p> </p><p>The answer to that was yes. Severus had spent the past three years planning how to get out of Cokeworth and to somewhere he might belong. He’d take his mother, of course. She didn’t deserve to be left by herself. But he had no money and no connections, so he had realized that the only way he could accomplish anything was if he scored high enough on his NEWTs and his OWLs that people were forced to sit up and take notice of him. He had to take every advantage that he could.</p><p> </p><p>But Lily was watching. Lily, with her father and his high-paying job, Lily who wouldn’t have to fend for herself until she was old enough and capable enough to do so. So Severus only shrugged and smiled sheepishly at her, which was the reaction she was expecting.</p><p> </p><p>She leaned forward and rested her hands on her knees. “Tuney sent a letter to Hogwarts,” she said in a voice filled with a frown. “She wanted them to let her attend, too, but they said no, because she’s got no magic.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Severus said. “I would have asked too, if I were her.” The thought of having to stand by and watch while a favored younger sister was given a train ride to a school of magic and mysteries made him feel physically sick. No wonder Petunia was going to stay at home on Wednesday.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” Lily announced with all the confidence in the world.</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t think so,” Severus said softly, without really meaning to, remembering a scrawny boy with Lily’s eyes wallowing in a shirt made for someone three times his size. Petunia had never ‘gotten over it.’</p><p> </p><p>Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus thought for a moment. “Well,” he said slowly, “did your parents get Petunia a cat too?”</p><p> </p><p>“No. What’s that got to do with anything?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, you got a cat. Shouldn’t she have gotten a cat too? She’s older than you, but you got a pet first. How do you think that makes her feel?”</p><p> </p><p>“But my Hogwarts letter said that I needed a cat,” Lily argued.</p><p> </p><p>“No, it said that you could bring a cat. <em>I’m</em> not taking a cat.” This was both due to the fact that his family couldn’t afford a pet, and that Severus was mildly allergic to dander. Until he got that fixed, there was no way he was getting an animal. “Do you see what I’m getting at here?”</p><p> </p><p>“No.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus sighed. “It’s not fair,” he said bluntly. “You got a cat, and Petunia didn’t, and you got magic, and Petunia didn’t, and you get to go to Hogwarts, but Petunia doesn’t.”</p><p> </p><p>“But I can’t help that!” Lily protested. “It’s not my fault.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not,” Severus agreed, “but it’s going to hurt Petunia’s feelings, because she’s going to think your parents like you better.” Actually, Petunia already thought that, and she wasn’t wrong. She was homely whereas Lily was beautiful, brazen whereas Lily was demure, raw-boned whereas Lily was delicate. People just naturally gravitated to Lily. “And that sort of resentment builds up.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily looked pensive for a long moment, twining a strand of hair the color of sunsets around her fingertip. “I suppose,” she said finally. “I’ll talk to my parents about it.” Then she was off again, chattering about the magical bookstore she had seen.</p><p> </p><p>Severus was actually interested in this topic, but Lily didn’t stay on it for long. She moved on to detail the robe shop, the ice cream place, the bank, and practically everything else her family had done that day in Diagon Alley, but finally Severus had had enough. There had been a question niggling the back of his brain since before Lily had sat down next to him.</p><p> </p><p>“Lily, would you die for me?”</p><p> </p><p>His question fell into one of the gaps where Lily was taking a breath to renew her excited rambling. Her face immediately turned solemn and she looked at him steadily.</p><p> </p><p>“Why?”</p><p> </p><p>He shrugged. “Just, would you?” There was a saying in Hogwarts: A History.</p><p> </p><p><em>A Gryffindor would die for you, but a Slytherin would kill for you.</em><br/>
<br/>
Severus was a Slytherin, he knew it in his bones. His dream-self had died for Lily, but that was because his dream-self had practically become a Gryffindor. If Lily was in peril now, Severus would kill her assailants, not allow himself to die. But Gryffindors were often noble past the point of reason. They would rather die themselves than sully their honor.</p><p> </p><p>If Lily was truly a Gryffindor—and he suspected that she was—she would die for those she considered her friends.</p><p> </p><p>He studied her. Her face was set and her eyes were grim, as though she were envisioning the situation that would force her to come to such a decision.</p><p> </p><p>Finally she looked back up at him. “Yes.”</p><p> </p><p>There was no explaining what that single word meant to Severus. Lily thought him worthy of her sacrifice. And she hadn’t just made her answer on a whim; that would have been worth nothing. She had thought about it, deliberated over it, and that made her reply mean something.</p><p> </p><p>He nodded at her and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Lily.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Does reading my old work sometimes make me cringe? You bet your boots it does &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Sorting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wednesday came. Severus’ marvelous anticipation was tainted by dread, for what if he saw all that he knew he would? He was chessmaster and pawn, victim and victor. He had the world at his fingertips, if only he knew how to manipulate it.</p><p> </p><p>His mother rapped on the bathroom door, breaking Severus out of his musings and away from the mirror. He had taken to doing that recently, staring at his reflection whenever he was unsettled, the better to reassure himself that he was still young and still unbroken. “Love, we’re going to be late.”</p><p> </p><p>“Coming, Mum,” Severus called.</p><p> </p><p>He was too nervous to eat. His mother hugged him briefly and slipped some coins into his pocket. “So you can have snacks on the train,” she whispered.</p><p> </p><p>Severus didn’t protest. He couldn’t.</p><p> </p><p>The Evanses didn’t have a Floo set up, so Severus and Eileen walked in the murky pre-dawn darkness over to their house, where their car was already idling in the driveway. Lily was clutching her kitten to her front, jiggling from foot to foot in excitement on the steps. Mr. Evans was finishing loading her trunk into the boot, but Mrs. Evans was nowhere to be seen.</p><p> </p><p>Lily caught sight of them and bounced over to Severus, eyes shining. “I couldn’t sleep last night, I was so happy,” she babbled. “This is the sort of thing that happens in fairy tales, Sev, we’re in a fairy tale.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus wondered if the puffy-haired boy would still be her prince. But he said nothing and grinned at her instead. Things would fall as they would. He had time to change them if it became necessary. Then he frowned. “Where’s Petunia? Isn’t she coming?”</p><p> </p><p>Lily’s chatter ceased abruptly. “She’s not,” she said softly. “She had a screaming match with Mum about it last night.” Her eyes got sad. “Sev, I think you were right about the cat.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Severus said, and he was. This, perhaps, was one of the little triggers that Petunia had allowed to take over her life. He hoped she could come to her senses this time, instead of marrying a walking tub of lard and birthing a small whale like she had before. A rotten business, that had been.</p><p> </p><p>Lily shook her head. “I wish I hadn’t talked about Hogwarts so much,” she murmured. “I think it’s my fault.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged. “It’s not all your fault. Petunia let herself be jealous.”</p><p> </p><p>“Still. That doesn’t excuse what I did.”</p><p> </p><p>“If you know that, you won’t do it again. Fix it if you can, but if you can’t, don’t allow yourself to dwell on it. Your life should not be a place for regrets.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily tilted her head to the side and studied him. “You’ve gotten so wise, lately. How?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus saw her eyes on another boy’s face. “I guess I grew up,” he said, too tired to be bitter. “Come on, your dad’s waiting.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They made it to the station in one piece, though Eileen had never become used to Muggle automobiles. She and Severus sat in the back, with Lily, sliding around on the slick leather seats.</p><p> </p><p>The station was bustling with movement, Muggle businessmen in pin-striped suits, groups of schoolchildren chattering excitedly as their chaperones looked on. But Eileen paid them no mind, much to the Evanses’ obvious confusion. “Come along, Platform 9 ¾ is this way,” she called over her shoulder, striding ahead in sensible shoes.</p><p> </p><p>Lily and Severus followed, too jittery to converse, though for one shining moment Lily did grasp Severus’ fingers for reassurance. It was a nice feeling, Severus mused, being relied on for support like that. He wondered if that had been what his dream-self had been seeking, and thought sorrowfully that if it was, he had been going about it in all the wrong ways.</p><p> </p><p>Then they were at the vast expanse of brick wall between Platforms 9 and 10, and Severus didn’t have time to muse over motivation, past, present, or future. “It’s an illusion,” Eileen explained to the Evanses. “You can walk right through it, but most people prefer to run.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus gave Lily a quizzical eyebrow, silently asking. She raised hers right back at him, and they took off at a dead sprint, pushing their luggage in front of them.</p><p> </p><p>Passing through the wall was like smelling the color yellow. For a moment, it made sense, but once Severus was through it he realized exactly how disoriented he had really been. Everyone took illusions differently, though. Eileen had told him she felt as though she was breaking into little pieces and reassembling on the other side, and when he asked Lily, she mumbled something about towers falling flat on their faces, and by then their parents were through, too, so he couldn’t ask for clarification.</p><p> </p><p>“Wow,” Mr. Evans said, gaping at the mass of wizarding humanity before him.</p><p> </p><p>“Wow,” Mrs. Evans agreed, tugging at his sleeve. “Dear, we need to get out of the way before someone else comes through.”</p><p> </p><p>“What? Oh, right,” Mr. Evans agreed dazedly, eyes flitting from person to person. “Does that boy have a peacock? Why does he have a peacock?”</p><p> </p><p>“Technically, students are only allowed to bring a toad, cat, or owl to Hogwarts,” Eileen said, “but the teachers don’t say anything about the more exotic pets as long as they stay in the dormitories and don’t cause any harm to the students. There was a boy in my year with a red fox.”</p><p> </p><p>“Peacocks,” Mr. Evans said again, as though all the entropy in the universe stemmed from that one unexplainable fact. “<em>Peacocks</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, dear,” Eileen fretted. “Going through the barrier might have done that to him, it happens with Muggles sometimes. Why don’t we find him a place to sit down and some water?”</p><p> </p><p>“Mum,” Lily interjected, “Sev and I are going to put our bags in the train.”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen had put a weightlessness charm on Severus’ trunk, but Lily had no such thing, so the first three minutes of their adventure was spent trying to hunt down a prefect. “Ugh,” Lily grumbled, jumping over someone’s owl cage. The owl inside hissed with displeasure. “There ought to be a sign that says ‘Prefects Here,’ or something.”</p><p> </p><p>A flash of platinum blond caught Severus’ attention from the corner of his eye, and his heart stuttered in his chest for a beat. “How desperate are we for help?” he asked, only half-joking. “There’s one.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily craned her head around until she caught sight of the badge flashing on the boy’s chest. “Oh, you’re right. He does rather look like he’s eaten something unpleasant.” Her mouth curved up. “But he’s a prefect, so he has to be nice to us.” With that, she skipped towards Lucius Malfoy, as pale, pretty, and pointy as Severus had ever known him.</p><p> </p><p>When Lucius caught sight of her, his mouth curled into a sneer for the barest of moments before he remembered himself and his position. “May I help you?”</p><p> </p><p>“You may,” Lily said breezily. “Could you put my trunk on the train for me, please? It’s rather heavy.”</p><p> </p><p>“Why didn’t you just put a weightlessness charm on it?”</p><p> </p><p>She winked at him. “Can’t do magic till we’re at Hogwarts, right? I don’t want to get in trouble before the term’s even started.”</p><p> </p><p>Now Lucius really did look like he’d been sucking on a lemon. “Might I inquire as to what your surname might be?”</p><p> </p><p>“Evans. I’m Lily Evans. Now could you please put my trunk on the train?”</p><p> </p><p>Rich and powerful Lucius may have grown up to be, but he was still a spindly-legged fifteen-year-old in this timeline, and watching him attempt to bodily haul Lily’s trunk onto the Hogwarts Express was a test to Severus’ poker face. Lily was not so lucky, but tried to conceal her laughter as hacking coughs into her elbow. From the dirty looks Lucius sent her way, Severus was certain that she was fooling nobody.</p><p> </p><p>“Excuse me, I need to get water,” she gasped, eyes brimming and body quaking with the force of her suppressed giggles. She darted away, but as soon as she was out of sight Severus was sure that he heard her cackle in mirth above the din. He only hoped that Lucius hadn’t heard it as well.</p><p> </p><p>With Lily’s trunk ensconced in a compartment, Severus effortlessly lifted his own up, but in doing so, he caught Lucius’ attention.</p><p> </p><p>“At least <em>you</em> had the decency to put a charm on your trunk,” Lucius huffed, disheveled and sweaty from wrestling Lily’s luggage aboard.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure she would have if she could have,” Severus replied mildly.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Muggleborns</em>,” Lucius sneered, his disdain transforming the politically correct term into an insult. “You have to wonder why they’re allowed to attend Hogwarts at all. Think of how much they must slow down the curriculum.”</p><p> </p><p>“Really,” Severus said dispassionately. “I was under the impression that Hogwarts is a school and that magical children are not allowed to practice magic in any capacity until they are seventeen or attending a registered magical facility for the intent purpose of learning. From that, I can’t see how Muggleborns could be behind in any way, except perhaps with the exception of theory. And theory is useless without application.” He coolly met Lucius’ eyes. “And how strange that you should dismiss Muggleborns to my face when I could very well be one myself.”</p><p> </p><p>“You have a charm on your trunk,” Lucius said, not breaking eye contact. “You’re at least a half-blood. What is your family name?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough,” Severus said with a humorless twist of his lips. “But I know who you are. Lucius Malfoy, son of Abraxas Malfoy, heir to one of the largest merchandising empires in the magical world.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius arched a perfect eyebrow. “What general information. I can hardly see how it could be of any use to you.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, it tells me everything that I need to know.” Their verbal sparring match would have continued but for Lily’s sudden reappearance.</p><p> </p><p>“Perhaps I’ll see you in Slytherin?” Lucius asked, ignoring her.</p><p> </p><p>“Perhaps,” Severus replied neutrally. When he turned his back to finish loading his trunk, the skin between his shoulder blades prickled uncomfortably with the weight of Lucius’ stare.</p><p> </p><p>“You made a friend!” Lily squealed into his ear. “And you were so worried.”</p><p> </p><p>“I wouldn’t call him a friend, Lily.” <em>More like a budding sociopath.</em> “And I don’t think you ought to have baited him like that. He seems the type to hold a grudge.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily clambered up onto the train. “He’s a prefect, Sev. He can’t do anything. Come on, let’s go find our compartment.”</p><p> </p><p>Oh, Lily, Severus thought to himself. You have no idea what he could do to you if he were motivated enough. I hope it never comes to that.</p><p> </p><p>But all he said out loud was, “All right.” He was still in Lily’s orbit, he realized, still revolving around her like he was caught in her gravitational pull. That had been his undoing, once before. He had to free himself from her regard. Not now, perhaps. But soon.</p><p> </p><p>They went to their compartment, bounced giddily on the plush velvet seats, pressed their faces to the window-glass to see the people still passing by. After the ten-minute warning to departure was called, Lily ripped the hem of her jumper getting down off the train. Severus said nothing, listening to her noises of dismay. The future was now, he was sure of it, and no amount of Eileen’s hopeful wishing could prevent that. The snowball had been set to rolling, but maybe this time he could prevent an avalanche.</p><p> </p><p>Saying goodbye was—uncomfortable, to say the least. Eileen had already said a thorough farewell to him in the privacy of their own home, where there were not strangers to see and judge. But the Evanses were prone to hugs, and Mrs. Evans captured him three separate times while Eileen consoled Lily about her jumper. “The house elves will fix it, dear.” She shot him a look of undiluted terror, but he pretended not to be concerned.</p><p> </p><p>Eileen gave him one last rib-cracking squeeze, Mr. Evans clapped his shoulder, and Mrs. Evans sniffled noisily into a handkerchief. “Oh, they grow up so fast.”</p><p> </p><p>But finally, <em>finally</em> they were on the train, pulling away from the station, and they didn’t have to keep waving until their arms were about to fall off. Severus settled down against the bench and stared out the window. Lisianthus crawled over to him and draped himself over his thigh. “Lily, can you remove your cat? I’m allergic.” His eyes were already starting to water.</p><p> </p><p>Lily reclaimed Lisianthus and spent the next two hours poring over every single one of her textbooks. Severus, on the other hand, decided to unwind with a nice easy book about the physics of space. He also kept an eye on the door for any sign of the puffy-haired boy who had made his life so miserable the first time around.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe that wasn’t fair, Severus acknowledged. He had done plenty of making the puffy-haired boy’s life miserable, too. It was just that the puffy-haired boy had had friends who were willing to unfairly gang up on Severus, and they had enjoyed it far too much.</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ spine burned with remembered humiliation. They had done so many things to him—he should hit them hard and fast, <em>now</em>, when they wouldn’t be expecting it, take revenge, make them <em>bleed</em>, make them <em>cry</em>, make them <em>beg for mercy</em>, make them wish that they had never <em>dared</em> to mock him and where he had come from, the circumstances over which he had no <em>control</em>—</p><p> </p><p>Lily made an absent humming noise as she reread the chapter on Transfiguring different types of metal, and the interruption was enough to snap Severus back into reality. Those boys hadn’t done anything to him yet—he hadn’t even <em>met</em> them.</p><p> </p><p>Severus glanced down at his hands and was unsurprised to see them shaking. He had just imagined hurting people. He had enjoyed imagining it. In that moment, Severus was glad he hadn’t eaten anything yet, though the trolley had come by twice, because he would have just thrown it all back up.</p><p> </p><p>Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t go down that road again. It would consume him, just like it had his dream-self. He had been no more than a husk of a man, driven by hate and something too obsessive to be called love. In that moment, Severus Snape sincerely considered taking up religion.</p><p> </p><p>Then the trolley lady came by again and Lily was roused from her paranoia-fueled knowledge-cramming session by the promise of sweets. Even though Severus still felt ill, he bought a bag of chocolate frogs with some of the money his mother had given him because she had wanted him to have good memories of Hogwarts. The rest, he tucked away as an emergency fund.</p><p> </p><p>Lily had no such reservations and bought one of everything. “You’re going to be sick,” Severus said disapprovingly, eying the spread of sugary things.</p><p> </p><p>“I couldn’t help it,” Lily protested. “I’ve never had magical sweets before. And you’re going to help me eat these, aren’t you?”</p><p> </p><p>It was his first time trying magical sweets, too, so against his better judgement, he did, though he greatly regretted having the Acid Pop. He was holding his hand clamped over his mouth, eyes streaming, rocking back and forth in pain, Lily looking on in concern, when the door to their compartment slid open and the puffy-haired boy and his band-shirt-wearing accomplice arrived in all their eleven-year-old glory.</p><p> </p><p>“Um, is he all right?” the puffy-haired boy asked.</p><p> </p><p>“He ate one of these,” Lily explained, holding up the Acid Pop wrapper.</p><p> </p><p>The boy in the band shirt laughed. “Oh, Acid Pops! I remember my first time eating one. I thought my tongue was going to fall off.”</p><p> </p><p>“How do you fix it?” Lily demanded.</p><p> </p><p>“Have any chocolate?” the puffy-haired boy asked. “That usually helps.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily thrust a chocolate frog at Severus, who, desperate for relief, shoved it in his mouth whole. Immediately, the burn subsided to a manageable level and he was able to straighten up in his seat.</p><p> </p><p>The puffy-haired boy grinned. “There you go. If it hurt you that badly, don’t eat it again. Different people have different reactions to different magical candies, my mum says.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, thanks,” Severus managed. His tongue felt raw and scalded. “I wish I’d known that before, though.”</p><p> </p><p>The puffy-haired boy shrugged. “They really should put warnings on the wrappers for Muggleborn.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus bristled, long-cultivated instincts of hostility rising to the surface. “I’m a half-blood.”</p><p> </p><p>The puffy-haired boy put his hands up in the universal gesture of <em>hey, calm down</em>. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “It’s just that half-bloods normally know about the candy and things.”</p><p> </p><p>They couldn’t afford candy, Severus thought, ashamed, and then was angry with himself for being ashamed. “So, Mr. Candy Expert,” he drawled, drawing upon every ounce of sarcasm held in his being (and it was a lot of sarcasm), “do you have anything <em>else</em> to tell us?”</p><p> </p><p>The puffy-haired boy opened his mouth to respond, but Lily beat him to the chase. “Severus, don’t be rude. Sorry about him,” she said to the two, smiling prettily. The puffy-haired boy went red and his band-shirted compatriot elbowed him, grinning. “He’s been techy all day.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus bristled, then realized he was just proving her point. “I’m going to the washroom,” he said abruptly, standing with a jerk. They didn’t seem terribly sorry to see him go.</p><p> </p><p>In the loo, he stood in front of the glided mirror, fancier than anything he’d ever seen in a washroom before. He stared at his reflection, still young, still untainted, still with a chance to do things right.</p><p> </p><p>He leaned his forehead against the cool glass and shut his eyes. “I am Severus Snape,” he whispered. “I’m eleven years old. My best friend is Lily Evans. I’m going to keep her alive. I am going to be happy in this life, and if that means making nice with the boys who helped ruin it the first time around, then I will. My life will not be a place for regrets.”</p><p> </p><p>The words rang true, so Severus took a moment to compose himself, splashing cold water on his face. When he got back to his compartment and slid the door open, a wave of laughter greeted him.</p><p> </p><p>“—and then he looks up, <em>so confused</em>, and he says, “But I’m <em>allergic</em> to spinach.” The band-shirt boy was in his element here, inciting hilarity in the normally-composed Lily. This wasn’t the way that things had been last time. Last time, his dream-self had refused Lily’s offer of candy, too proud to take what he couldn’t afford himself, and so there had been no helpful remedy provided for Acid Pops.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had been wary, disliking them on principle because they were so obviously wealthy—or at least, wealthier than him. They had returned that sentiment, and Lily had stood beside Severus because that was what she did for her friends. All of Severus’ problems had stemmed from himself. <em>All because of my pride, my damnable pride.</em></p><p> </p><p>They noticed him, then, standing in the doorway, and went quiet. Time to bite the bullet. “I apologize for my rudeness,” Severus said stiffly. “Thank you.” He went back to his seat.</p><p> </p><p>The puffy-haired boy grinned. “No problem, mate. So,” he announced, changing the subject, “what Houses do you want to be Sorted into? We,” he gestured to himself and his companion, “want to go to Gryffindor.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh, me too!”</p><p> </p><p>They exchanged congratulations all around, then looked at Severus. This was where it had really all gone sour last time. He had to be careful. “Wait, I never did catch your names,” he said, trying to buy some time.</p><p> </p><p>They were Sirius Black and James Potter, and as soon as he heard that, he remembered having known it. It was a strange sensation, but he decided not to dwell on it. “I’m Severus Snape,” he introduced himself. “My mum’s a witch. She thinks I’ll be in Ravenclaw, but—” here he shrugged as though he didn’t particularly care—“I’ve always been rather ambitious. I think it might be Slytherin for me.”</p><p> </p><p>Black and Potter reacted like they had been shown an infected wound. “But Slytherins are <em>evil</em>!” Potter shouted, waving his hands about ineffectually. “You can’t <em>possibly</em> want to be one!”</p><p> </p><p>“I wouldn’t,” Black added. “My family’s Dark, and they’ve all gone to Slytherin. They’re some of the craziest bastards you’ll ever meet.” From Black’s tone, Severus figured this was an under-exaggeration. Huh. His dream-self had never looked into the Black family tree, but that would surely explain a lot.</p><p> </p><p>But first, he tried to reason with them. “Not all Slytherins can be evil,” he protested. “That’s illogical, because that implies that all people with a certain personality type are evil.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, they are!” Potter snapped. “They’re all evil, lying, worthless—”</p><p> </p><p>“James, shut up,” Sirius said calmly. He looked at Severus. “The thing about House Slytherin,” he explained, “is that most of them are from old, Dark families like mine. And the thing about old, Dark families like mine is that they have issues. Lots of inbreeding, lots of mental problems, those sorts of things. Lots of paranoia. Put a lot of people like that in one place together, and it starts to get worse.</p><p> </p><p>That’s why I’m getting out while I can. I couldn’t stand spending the next seven years surrounded by people like my family.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus paused. That…made sense. But it still didn’t matter, because he would still go to Slytherin. He had to. Right?</p><p> </p><p>“That’s a good point to consider,” he replied cautiously. “We’ll just have to see where the Hat puts me then.”</p><p> </p><p>They stared at him. “What?” he protested.</p><p> </p><p>“A Hat?” Potter asked. “My father said we have to wrestle a troll.”</p><p> </p><p><em>Shoot</em>. He tried to shrug it off. “Just something I read in a book.”</p><p> </p><p>“Which book?” Lily probed, eyes boring into his skull. “None of the books I read said anything about the Sorting Ceremony. It’s supposed to be a secret.”</p><p> </p><p>“Then maybe I didn’t read it, all right? Maybe I just had a dream that there was a Hat that sang a song about the Houses and Sorted us.” Lily eyed him skeptically. “It was a weird night,” he defended himself. He’d been digging himself deeper with every word he’d said, but he hadn’t been able to stop babbling.</p><p> </p><p>Black grinned widely. “No offense, Snape, but I’d rather wrestle a troll.”</p><p> </p><p>“None taken, Black.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Severus was almost enjoying himself when the train pulled up to their destination. It turned out that Black and Potter weren’t half-bad company when they weren’t out to get him. Of course, Potter was still bigoted and kept making eyes at Lily, and Black was still an immature twerp. But that was to be expected. And Severus was actually far fonder of Black than he’d expected to be, because, now that he knew it was there, he could tell that Black did indeed have a serious side. <em>Or, rather, a Sirius si—no, not going to go there. Uh-uh. Nope.</em></p><p> </p><p>But it was irrelevant how much he hadn’t minded them, because if he were Sorted into Slytherin as he planned, the most he could expect was to be their friendly enemy, if that. Judging by Potter’s view of Slytherins in general, he doubted that he could even be that lucky.</p><p> </p><p>They had all changed into their robes, and Severus was glad that, even if his were secondhand, they weren’t terribly worn. Potter had struck up a conversation with Lily about pets; apparently he had a barn owl called Venator. Severus thought that that was terribly uncreative. A barn owl named Hunter in Latin? It was as though Potter hadn’t even tried. Black, on the other hand, did not have a pet, he shared with Severus, because his mother believed emotional attachments were a sign of weakness. When pressed, however, he admitted that he would like to get a dog when he was older.</p><p> </p><p>All conversation ceased when the Hogwarts Express screeched to a halt. Lily sat wide-eyed, clutching Lisianthus. Potter sat open-mouthed, and Black pasted his cockiest expression on his face. Severus tried to keep his face and body language neutral.</p><p> </p><p>It all progressed from there as Severus remembered it. Rubeus Hagrid directed first-years onto little boats, four at a time. Severus ended up sitting with Lily, Black, and Potter again, though he recognized one of the other Marauders in the boat directly behind them, a lanky boy with tawny hair and amber eyes. He couldn’t remember his name, though, as hard as he tried. It always remained on the tip of his tongue but just out of reach. The feeling was maddening.</p><p> </p><p>Too soon, they stood in the Great Hall, under millions of enchanted stars. The sea of faces stretched from wall to wall. Severus saw Lucius at the Slytherin table, along with another, younger girl he recognized. They went together, or, at least, they would, but he still couldn’t recall her name.</p><p> </p><p>The room went silent and Severus realized with a wince that the Sorting Hat had appeared at the front of the room atop its customary stool. Lily elbowed him sharply, but the Hat opened a tear at its brim and began to sing.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>Look at me, what do you see?</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I am a Hat, of course.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>But I am tasked to make the last</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Decision about Sorts.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Now, will you go to Gryffindor,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>For all those brave and true?</em>
  <br/>
  <em>They do their best to earn their rest</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Amid the tales of heroes past.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or shall you go to Ravenclaw,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And stuff your brain with ancient lore?</em>
  <br/>
  <em>To learn, and learn, and learn some more,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>A different feat than Gryffindor?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps you’ll fit with Hufflepuff,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>To traverse smooth as well as rough.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>‘Loyalty,’ now that’s their creed,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And for their loyalty they’ll bleed.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or Slytherin, a name that’s said</em>
  <br/>
  <em>To frighten little kids in bed?</em>
  <br/>
  <em>But ambition does not evil make</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Those whose sigil is the snake.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And now it’s time to look inside</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And see what I can see.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I’ll see your hopes, I’ll see your fears,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I’ll see every hidden tear.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But fear not: I will not speak</em>
  <br/>
  <em>After in your mind I peek.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>For my job is simple, simple to say:</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I look at you, and who you are,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>See in which House you will go far,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And I set you on your merry way.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Severus wasn’t terribly impressed, but then, he supposed, it must be difficult to be inspired after so many years on the job. He tried to ignore the way his palms were sweating, even though he had been through this all before.</p><p> </p><p>Black was the first Sorted of their little group, and, as predicted, he went to Gryffindor. The girl sitting at the Slytherin table who Severus had noticed earlier didn’t react, though Severus had a gut feeling that they were connected in some way.</p><p> </p><p>Lily went to Gryffindor. Severus would have been terribly surprised if she hadn’t. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps he ought to have been pushing her towards Ravenclaw, but he shook it off. It was too late now.</p><p> </p><p>The boy whom Severus had recognized on the boat ride—<em>Remus Lupin</em>—went to Gryffindor.</p><p> </p><p>A nondescript boy with mousy brown hair—<em>Peter Pettigrew</em>—went to Gryffindor. Severus felt a growl build in his throat but cut it off. Pettigrew—<em>the rat</em>—had committed no sin yet. God help him if he ever did.</p><p> </p><p>Potter also went to Gryffindor, though first he sat and casually chatted with the Hat for nearly five minutes. Severus wanted to rip his throat out, nervous from anticipation and indecision as he was.</p><p> </p><p>And finally, <em>finally</em>, it was <em>Snape, Severus</em> who was called.</p><p> </p><p>He stumbled blindly to the stool, put on the Hat, and sat.</p><p> </p><p>The Hat slid over Severus’ eyes, its brim resting on the bridge of his nose. He squirmed uncomfortably, waiting.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re a strange one, aren’t you?” the Hat said conversationally into Severus’ ear, and Severus jumped. “Oh, I mean no offense by that, to be sure, but truly, you are. A mind full of memories that are and are not your own…is something I can’t say I’ve seen before, and I’ve been a Sorting Hat for a rather long time.”</p><p> </p><p>So they are memories, Severus thought.</p><p> </p><p>“Not anymore,” the Hat corrected. “They <em>were</em> memories, but they’re not anymore. It might be better to call them reflections, perhaps, like those seen in a pool of water. Make too many ripples, and they’ll break apart. You’re making waves, so they’re not quite memories yet, and they likely won’t be.”</p><p> </p><p>So I saw the future? Severus asked with a sense of quiet despair.</p><p> </p><p>“That too. Or did you mean, did you see the future magically?” The Hat gave the impression of shrugging. “I couldn’t tell you. I’m just a Hat, after all. The important thing is that you <em>believe</em> you can see the future magically. Believe me, belief is more powerful than the most powerful spell. There’s a paradox in there somewhere. Or maybe not.”</p><p> </p><p>The Hat’s tone turned sympathetic. “This is a heavy burden for anyone to carry. I wish it were not so, but perhaps it is best this way. And I would like to make something clear: you do have options. You have been proceeding close to the original timeline, but perhaps it is better if you veer from it. You have been avoiding that because you are frightened of going forward blind. Child, that is life. You wish to be happy in this life, do you not? Stop plotting.”</p><p> </p><p>But I <em>can’t</em>, Severus thought desperately. There was a prophecy, and I chose the wrong side, and Lily died because of me—</p><p> </p><p>“Child,” the Hat interrupted, its voice much, much gentler now. “If there is a prophecy, then you can do nothing to negate it. You say that your friend died as a direct result of your actions? Then doing nothing may very well keep her alive just as well as if you actively work against the Dark Lord. But no matter what I tell you, you must decide on your own. You could choose to tell your mother that the dream didn’t come true. She would embrace it with open arms. She would stop worrying about your fate. You could choose not to go to Dumbledore. He would seek to use your talents before they had developed when he should be focused on developing <em>you</em>. What harm has there ever been in waiting?”</p><p> </p><p>The Hat’s question dropped into stillness like a stone tossed into the bottom of a well.</p><p> </p><p>It waited, then, seeing that it would not get a response, sighed heavily. “Well, I suppose I should Sort you,” it said with a forced levity. “Hufflepuff, now that’s out. You wouldn’t fit in very well. Too sarcastic, too much of an outlier. Hufflepuff is very much loyal to its own members, and that is a trait you simply do not possess. You are loyal on your own say-so, and not because it is expected of you.”</p><p> </p><p>That’s not a bad thing, Severus thought, ruffled.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t say it was,” the Hat replied. “Gryffindor, now there’s a quandary. You are brave, no doubt about it. You would do well there. But I am concerned that putting you in such close contact with Lily Evans would be detrimental to your mental health. You know of what I speak.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus did. Surely obsession would only grow with proximity. He did not want to become enamored with Lily Evans and lose the best (only) friend he’d ever had.</p><p> </p><p>“So for that, let’s say Gryffindor is out. Now, the real decision: Ravenclaw or Slytherin. You knew that it would come to this. And you’re leaning in favor of Slytherin.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus nodded, and the Hat sighed explosively. “I see what I just told you about choices just went right over your head,” it snarled, sounding peeved. “Let me give you all the reasons why I refuse to Sort you there: One, it’s filled with blood purists, which you are not and do not wish to be this time around. Two, it will alienate you from Lily Evans, which, as I recall, you did not want to happen again. Three, it will make you a target for the Marauders. James Potter is over-excitable and arrogant, and he will mark you as an enemy. Sirius Black will go along with it because he will not want to alienate himself by defending a Slytherin. Four, it will limit your opportunities and your allies in the event of a war. Shall I go on?”</p><p> </p><p>But I have to go there! Severus protested desperately. I have to be recruited by the Dark Lord again!</p><p> </p><p>“Rubbish,” snapped the Hat. “You were a brilliant student the first time. Admittedly, you didn’t try on schoolwork nearly as hard as you ought to have, but that’s neither here nor there. Add nearly twenty years of experience to your mind, and what was brilliant before will be blinding.” The Hat’s voice dropped an octave. “People will notice you, Severus Snape. Make no mistake, the Dark Lord Voldemort will want you. You need not worry about that, if that is what you desire.”</p><p> </p><p>Well, <em>that</em> was a terrifying thought.</p><p> </p><p>But I have to be in Slytherin because I have to win Lucius over to the Light side! Severus protested, but more weakly than before. The Hat’s tirade had filled him with quiet, nagging doubts.</p><p> </p><p>“No, you don’t,” the Hat answered readily. “I told you, you will attract attention. People like Lucius Malfoy will look at you, and they will see power. Lucius will approach you and attempt to cultivate you as an ally. That will give you all the opportunity that you will need to try and influence his actions.”</p><p> </p><p>But what if you’re wrong? Severus thought in a small voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Then I will be surprised,” the Hat declared. “I have been doing this job for a millennium, Severus Snape. Moreover, I have seen both Lucius Malfoy’s and Tom Riddle’s minds. I doubt that I am wrong.”</p><p> </p><p>It could tell that he still wasn’t entirely convinced. “And perhaps you are mourning the loss of your reputation if you go to Ravenclaw. Slytherins are known, after all, for being competent and well-rounded, as well as ambitious. But let me tell you that as a Ravenclaw, you will be underestimated. People will look at you and they will see an air-brained bookworm who would rather be translating runes than doing anything useful. That is hardly a bad thing for someone in your position. And I will tell you that you were not Sorted wrongly the first time. Were it not for the blindingly stupid decisions you would make and the company you would be surrounded by, I <em>would</em> Sort you there still.” Here the Hat took on a wheedling tone. “Now <em>you</em> tell <em>me</em>, where is the last place one would expect to find a Slytherin?”</p><p> </p><p>Damn, thought Severus, though he could not deny that he was relieved not to go back to that House made up of thinly veiled insults and even more transparent manipulations. The Hat had made a good case, and he supposed he would try to take it in good grace.</p><p> </p><p>“RAVENCLAW!” the Hat roared, opening its brim as far as it could go.</p><p> </p><p>A table of students burst into cheers. Severus stood, wobbly-legged, and took the Hat off. As he raised it from his head, he heard it whisper, “Tell me how it goes.”</p><p> </p><p>He stumbled to the Ravenclaw table and sat amidst numerous handshakes and pats on the back.</p><p> </p><p>There was no turning back now.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Oops</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Being Sorted into Ravenclaw was turning out to be infinitely better than being Sorted into Slytherin had been, by the mere element that Severus had not been immediately designated as a pariah. In Ravenclaw, Severus was not a solitary half-blood among blood-purist purebloods—he was a half-blood among half-bloods. He didn’t receive any sneering looks for his non-magical surname or the fact that his mother had stooped to marry a Muggle. This was a marked difference from his stint in Slytherin, where his blood status had thrown him to the very bottom of the pecking order.</p><p> </p><p>In Ravenclaw, Severus was not mocked for his secondhand books or his shabby robes. And why should he be? He was fulfilling the stereotype of the disheveled scholar who cared about his studies more than his appearance. Half of Ravenclaw was the “disheveled scholar” type, and the other half consisted of those who believed that fashion was a completely subjective term. The first time that Severus had seen a fellow Ravenclaw wearing broomstick-patterned knee-length stockings under her uniform skirt, he vaguely remembered a little wisp of a girl with unkempt, scraggly hair and butterbeer corks for earrings. Somehow, it had made him feel more at home in Ravenclaw tower.</p><p> </p><p>In Slytherin, his appearance had only been more ammunition for his Housemates to use against him. They had destroyed his things when they could, under the excuse that “we thought it was rubbish that someone had forgotten to throw away.”</p><p> </p><p>No, there was no denying that Ravenclaw was far better even now than Slytherin had ever been. His Housemates were polite. His dorm mates gave him his space, and so far his trunk hadn’t even been tampered with. He hadn’t the least thing to complain about.</p><p> </p><p>But all these good things notwithstanding, today Severus was in a Bad Mood.</p><p> </p><p>Lily had taken one look at him and, able to read his moods like a book, retreated to the far side of the library with some of the other Gryffindor girls. Severus would have been grateful for her perceptiveness if he hadn’t been seething like a pot put to boil.</p><p> </p><p>He had already been grumpy this morning because some of his Housemates had been having a lively argument about the best kind of magical potting soil to use for wild-type Devil’s Snare over breakfast, and they had kept trying to pull him into the conversation. Their motivations had been purely benevolent, he was sure, but still. It had taken a few well-timed glares to make them realize that he was not any sort of conversationalist before nine o’clock in the morning or several cups of coffee. (Worse, coffee was not served at Hogwarts because Healers had found that caffeine adversely affected magical development in immature witches and wizards.)</p><p> </p><p>But the real reason for his bad mood came after breakfast. He had had to go to double Transfiguration (historically not one of his favorite classes anyway), where McGonagall had pulled him aside and reprimanded him for the E he had pulled on his latest essay. He was left quivering with anger after that confrontation—not because McGonagall had scolded him for not meeting the precedent he had set with his other schoolwork, but because he had absent-mindedly set that precedent himself. He had accidentally Transfigured a match into a needle within five minutes of the demonstration having been given, which made McGonagall believe that she had some sort of prodigy on her hands, and she told the other teachers so. They were all now noticeably holding him to higher standards. Understandable from a teacher’s perspective, but a nuisance to Severus.</p><p> </p><p>He had previously been considering the best course of action to take regarding the years of experience from the dream and the edge up it gave him in magic. Finally, he had concluded that the best thing to do would be to pretend that he was only ordinary in regards to schoolwork (which, against stereotype, was not too terribly uncommon for Ravenclaws). Sometimes the best defense lay in concealment, after all. But then he had gone and blown it all with a careless mistake in front of McGonagall, and now there was no use playing dumb. He was furious at himself for having lost one of his greatest advantages.</p><p> </p><p>It was after classes now, and he had set up in the library to work on homework, along with the vast majority of all the other first-years. It would be another few weeks before most of them (Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs) realized they could do homework just as easily in their common rooms, and then the library would be free for those who actually wanted to study (Slytherins and Ravenclaws). Right now, it was a madhouse. Madam Pince had already threatened expulsion twenty-seven times, to no avail. It seemed that even she knew that they would have to go away on their own terms.</p><p> </p><p>The lack of monk-like silence was taking its toll on Severus, who fantasized using an Unforgivable or two just to get some peace, Azkaban be damned. His shoulders got tighter and tighter and his hands kept twitching towards his wand with every especially obnoxious noise. He could have left the library for the relative serenity of the Ravenclaw common room, but that would mean giving in to all the dunderheads who believed they could roughhouse wherever they wanted. Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to will away his throbbing headache.</p><p> </p><p>Instead of hexing everybody’s face off, though, he had shown remarkable restraint and was channeling his irritation into his Potions essay. Slughorn had assigned nine inches on the uses of different lilies in sleeping draughts, but Severus had been in such a bad mood that he had already written three feet on how lilies could actually completely bugger up the purpose of the intended potion depending on how they were prepared, and he could still write seven more. Lilies were a complicated flower magically, which was why they were only examined <em>in theory</em> at Hogwarts. If the petals were shaved, the potion could put a giant to sleep for months. If the petals were diced, the sleeping potion would become permanent (also known as poison). If the petals were shredded, the potion would explode, and the resulting smoke could cause, ahem, <em>complications</em> with the human reproductive system. That wasn’t even taking the rest of the flower into consideration. He finished the essay at four feet and eight inches of cramped handwriting, and slammed his quill down, still not satisfied.</p><p> </p><p>He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. When that didn’t work, he stood up abruptly and vanished into the stacks, where he managed to lose himself in a fascinating book about magical creatures and where to find them. He only came back to reality when his knees started hurting from standing too long, so he took the book back to his solitary table, much less inclined to homicide now.</p><p> </p><p>Except, his table had been inhabited during his absence and all of his things had been dumped on the floor. The instigator, a girl with a Slytherin tie and wild black hair, met his eyes and gave him a coldly superior smile.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had cooled down enough while reading that he did not immediately begin to decide how to murder her without being caught. He also had a sinking feeling that he knew who this girl was, even if he couldn’t quite recall her name at the moment. In the dream, she had been one of his chief tormenters within the House of Slytherin, and she had hated him—not because he was a half-blood, and not because he was poor, but because he had refused to give her the satisfaction of allowing her to win. No matter how many of his books she vandalized, and no matter how many jinxes she hit him with, he would just brush himself off and smirk at her as though to say <em>Is that the best you can do?</em></p><p> </p><p>Yes, it was his pride, his damnable pride, that had gotten him through Slytherin in one piece, and it was his pride, his damnable pride, that had pushed him to join the Dark Lord, because it was there that he thought he would never have to bow and scrape to those to whom he was superior in every way but blood…</p><p> </p><p>“You are aware that I was sitting there?” he asked in cool, bored tones. He was finding that appearing wholly unruffled in any situation could be one of his greatest weapons.</p><p> </p><p>“I knew,” she said, still looking at him in a way that was insufferably smug.</p><p> </p><p>“Then surely you knew that I left a Cringing Cushion on the seat for you.”</p><p> </p><p>She paled and leapt to her feet, craning around to see her backside. Cringing Cushions wrote hilarious and offensive things on the victim’s rear end and were nearly impossible to remove from clothing. But the girl’s inspection revealed nothing.</p><p> </p><p>Severus took his seat and levitated his things back onto the table with a casual flick of his wand. Such a demonstration of power was unwise, but he didn’t care anymore. He looked up and met the girl’s accusing gaze. “This is my seat,” he said as blandly as possible. “You are welcome to sit at this table, but this is my seat. Kindly remember that.”</p><p> </p><p>She scoffed and leaned towards him. “What? You think you own this seat?”</p><p> </p><p>“As long as I get to this seat first, it is mine until I am done with it. I thought that was an understood practice.”</p><p> </p><p>There looked to be a lot of things she wanted to say in response to that, but instead she sniffed, grabbed her books, and stalked away. To plot, Severus was sure. She would be back, and she would not be happy. He had just made himself an enemy, and wondered if he shouldn’t have just picked up his books and left. But, no. He wouldn’t lick anyone’s boots, not anymore. If that won him enemies, fine. But he had to draw the line somewhere. He wouldn’t be a Peter Pettigrew.</p><p> </p><p>“Who knew you had it in you?” someone asked from behind him. Severus turned to see Sirius Black come out from the stacks, where he had presumably watched the entire exchange. “<em>I</em> wouldn’t even cross Trixie, and I know that she wouldn’t dare harm me. Maybe you’re not so bad, for a Ravenclaw.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus raised an eyebrow and ignored the dig at his newfound House. “Trixie?” The name didn’t ring true to the dream’s account of her.</p><p> </p><p>Black smirked. “Bellatrix. My cousin.”</p><p> </p><p>The words clicked into place. Bellatrix Black, most devoted follower of the Dark Lord, gleeful torturer of Muggles and wizards alike. Bellatrix Black, who perhaps might still murder her cousin, to whom Severus was speaking now.</p><p> </p><p>“That’s an odd name.”</p><p> </p><p>Black shrugged. “My family’s got some awfully strange ideas on what’s appropriate for names. Constellations and such. I’m named after the Dog Star, you know. But you’ve got no room to talk. What mother names her child “Severe”?”</p><p> </p><p>“It can also mean “Grave” or “Serious”,” Severus said, though he had to admit he had never gotten a satisfactory answer from his mother on the subject. He wondered if she herself knew.</p><p> </p><p>Black stared at him, and a wide slow smile spread across his face. Severus realized what train of thought had pulled into Black’s mental station. “You’re Serious. And I’m Sirius.”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>No</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Yes</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t you have homework to do?” Severus asked, hoping to pull Black’s attention onto something more substantial. From what he remembered, Black had the attention span (and the intellectual capability) of a goldfish. Indeed, Black guffawed loudly (drawing a withering glare from Madam Pince) and seemed to forget about his oh-so-fascinating discovery.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, <em>technically</em> I have homework, but I don’t see why I should bother doing it. We have to write an essay comparing basic cleaning spells, and it’s not like I’ll ever need to know those.”</p><p> </p><p>“And why is that?” Severus asked, opening his book again. Without any invitation, Black seated himself at the table, leaning on his elbows.</p><p> </p><p>“Because of house-elves, of course. Why should I clean since they’ll do it for me?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus fought off the desire to hit Black with something heavy, like <em>Hogwarts: A History</em>. By God, he hated entitled brats. His ire must have shown on his face.</p><p> </p><p>“What, did I offend?” Black asked with widened eyes. Severus took a moment to compose himself, lest he actually give into the temptation. (There was a copy of <em>Hogwarts: A History</em> on the shelves…)</p><p> </p><p>“You are a scion of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black,” he said. “On the train, the things that you said indicated that you want to be different from your family. <em>Better</em> than your family. You wanted to get away from the culture of blood purity and its side effects. But right now, you are not holding to what you said. Despite your words, you imagine that you are better than others simply because of the blood that pumps through your veins. You are wealthy, and therefore you feel entitled. You have never worked a day in your life for anything, and you think that it will always be that way. Everything you have ever wanted, you have gotten.” Severus leaned forward. “So, tell me what happens when your family gets tired of your Gryffindor shenanigans and disowns you. You will have nothing. No money, no connections, and no way to gain either of those things because you ignored lessons thinking that you would never need to know what they offered.”</p><p> </p><p>Good God, I’ve turned into Hermione Granger, Severus thought, watching Black’s face go red, then white, then red again. Mouth ineffectually opening and closing, no words making it out, Black finally shoved his seat back from the table with an ear-splitting screech and stormed away. Madame Pince turned her merciless glare onto Severus.</p><p> </p><p>Perhaps he hadn’t been <em>quite</em> as in control of himself as he’d thought.</p><p> </p><p>Wearily, he returned his attention to his book, but to his annoyance, he was disrupted yet again. “That family really has the most <em>disgusting</em> propensity for dramatics, doesn’t it?” a familiar voice drawled from behind him. Lucius Malfoy set himself down in Black’s abandoned seat and arranged himself like he expected the paparazzi to be along any minute.</p><p> </p><p>Pot calling kettle, Severus thought. Lucius had been infamous amongst Slytherins for his tantrums, a trait that seemed genetic as his son had been the same. But he said nothing (to compensate for the overabundance of speech that he had just given Black) and merely shrugged.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius loved few things more than he loved an audience. (If Severus had to guess, those few things would be mirrors, Lucius’ own opinion of himself, and the full-time hobby of disdaining those of lesser status.) Lucius was a natural showman; he used his voice and body to a great effect. It was one of the reasons why he had been so very influential as a politician, and now he was turning his not-inconsiderable charm onto Severus. Severus braced himself.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry you were Sorted into Ravenclaw,” Lucius said, injecting so much fake sincerity into his voice that Severus could practically see it oozing onto the table. Well, then. Lucius obviously wasn’t as accomplished as Severus remembered him being. Severus kept forgetting that this gangly fifteen-year-old in front of him was no dangerous mastermind yet, which was especially ironic when he remembered that Lucius had failed Advanced Runes <em>twice</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Severus smiled a tight-lipped smile. “Don’t be. The Hat thought that it would be a better environment for me, and I’m inclined to agree.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius furrowed his brow. “I don’t see what you could mean. Slytherin has a great number of members from Ancient and Distinguished Houses. Surely you would have found the number of connections to be made quite beneficial, especially with your level of skill.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius was flattering him, trying to butter him up. He did not truly believe that Severus was capable of striking out on his own and succeeding, regardless of innate ability. Instead, he was trying to groom Severus as an underling, a feat which was especially vital now, when friendships and alliances had not finished forming and the first-years were still bewildered and would cling to any morsel of affection thrown their way. Severus knew these tricks; moreover, the Hat had been correct that Lucius would approach him.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius would try to influence Severus; Severus would take these encounters and the proximity which they afforded him to influence Lucius right back.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m afraid what I mean is that I am a half-blood.” There, that was blunt enough to garner Lucius’ full, startled attention. People, especially purebloods, did not talk about such things in polite company. Severus was tired of being delicate. He was a Ravenclaw; Ravenclaws appreciated facts above all else, and the fact was that blunt talk would gain him more ground than pussyfooting around the subject would.</p><p> </p><p>“The Hat thought that I was well suited for Slytherin. However, it warned me that I might not be safe in such a company that would automatically consider me inferior because of what my father is.” He met Lucius’ eyes. “Will you deny it?”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius hesitated for the barest moment. “I will certainly deny it. We Slytherins put stock in ability, not blood.”</p><p> </p><p>That was a bare-faced lie if ever Severus had heard one. Hufflepuffs believed that, and Hufflepuffs and Slytherins were natural enemies, just like Gryffindors and Slytherins, and occasionally Ravenclaws and Slytherins. Damn Slytherins. They had ruined House Slytherin.</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged. “All right, then. But I’m a bit confused on one point, and I was wondering if you could clear it up for me.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius smiled. “Of course.”</p><p> </p><p>“If Slytherins put stock in ability over blood, as you just said, then why is there such an emphasis on making connections within the House?”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius floundered, but recovered admirably. “We are interested in garnering talent. Through connections, we Slytherins as a House are able to promote those of our members who possess talent into positions where they will be able to utilize those talents most effectively. As a result, House Slytherin upholds its reputation, and those with talent are noticed, whereas they might have otherwise been overlooked.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus was impressed, and not just at Lucius’ coherency. Why, that had almost been the entire truth. Lucius had just conveniently omitted the part where “those with talent” were forevermore beholden to their benefactors, because, if one read between the lines, one realized that “those with talent” would have to be nearly exclusively Slytherin half-bloods and Muggleborns. Slytherin Purebloods would have their family names and their family connections to promote them, so they wouldn’t need such patronage. Half-bloods and Muggleborns didn’t have the same privilege.</p><p> </p><p>“That makes sense,” Severus said agreeably. “So, why are you talking to me?”</p><p> </p><p>He would push Lucius a little and see what happened if he managed to trap him in his lies.</p><p> </p><p>“Why wouldn’t I talk to you?” Lucius said, with a charming smile. Severus returned it with a smile that, while somewhat less practiced, was just as sincere (which meant it probably wasn’t sincere at all).</p><p> </p><p>“I am not in your House, age group, or social circle. The only interaction you have had with me was when you helped my friend get her trunk on the train. There is no reason for you to talk with me.”</p><p> </p><p>He left the implied <em>So you must want something from me</em> hanging in the air.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius was startled, Severus could tell, but he again recovered himself with commendable speed. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus rested his chin on his palm. “How should I put this? I am well aware of my status in the wizarding world. I am the half-blood son of a disgraced Pureblood witch. You, however, are the heir to a vast fortune and a great deal of influence. We have no connection that would warrant this type of proximity.”</p><p> </p><p>“Can’t I just be friendly?” Lucius asked. “You are sitting here all alone, and perhaps I, as a responsible prefect, want to ensure that you’re adjusting well to Hogwarts.”</p><p> </p><p>“I would believe that,” Severus replied, “if your manner did not suggest otherwise. You have not enquired about my welfare at all.”<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Lucius was looking trapped. Severus decided to push him just the <em>tiniest</em> bit further.</p><p> </p><p>“Besides,” he said, “it is well known that Slytherins are remarkably insular as a House. I am not a Slytherin, and so it seems even more unlikely that you should approach me without an ulterior motive.”</p><p> </p><p>There, he had laid out his hand. Now, what would Lucius say to that?</p><p> </p><p>Lucius stared. “You are <em>far</em> too young to be so cynical. I came over here to speak to you, and the first thing that you think of is manipulation? What has the world done to you?”</p><p> </p><p>Ah, Severus thought. So, you’re trying to redirect me like I redirected Black? That’s not going to work, but I commend you for trying.</p><p> </p><p>Aloud he said, “I know your type. Answer the question.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius sighed. “I cannot believe you just said that I am a type. I am a perfectly unique character, I will have you know.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure,” Severus replied. “But why did you come over here?”</p><p> </p><p>“I wanted to borrow that book from you.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus glanced down at the book in front of him. “There are other copies on the shelves, you know. Why did you come over here without looking there first?” Truthfully, there were no other copies on the shelves, but Severus wanted to see Lucius spill.</p><p> </p><p>“I want <em>that</em> copy.”</p><p> </p><p>“How could you tell that you wanted this copy from the far side of the room? And why would you even need a copy of this book? I doubt that you’re taking Care of Magical Creatures, and this book is hardly even relevant to that class anyway. Why did you come over here?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why do you assume that I had an ulterior reason for coming over here?”</p><p> </p><p>“Everything in you manner suggests it, so tell me, <em>why did you come over here?</em>”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius broke. “Well, the thing is—I’m not quite sure how to put this—”</p><p> </p><p>“Perhaps you could just spit it out,” Severus suggested. “Like you haven’t been this entire conversation.”</p><p> </p><p>“We’re family,” Lucius blurted.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had <em>not</em> been expecting that, but in retrospect, it was a decent excuse, if he hadn’t known that Lucius was grasping at straws. Lucius was related to nearly all of wizarding High Society by either blood or marriage (or both). It was no great feat to imagine that he shared blood with the Prince family.</p><p> </p><p>“How?” Severus asked cautiously.</p><p> </p><p>“Your grandfather is my great-great grandmother’s third cousin.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius had done research on Severus to know that off the top of his head. Severus wasn’t surprised by that, but he was quite nearly struck dumb by the implications of what Lucius had just said. He had just claimed Severus as <em>family</em>.</p><p> </p><p>That meant that he had just put himself on a level with Severus, or, more correctly, he had raised Severus up to his own level, despite the disparity in their classes. Family did not lord over family (when anyone could see), so that meant that he could not have Severus as an underling as he had certainly been planning. At most, he could have Severus as a sort of second-in-command.</p><p> </p><p>Certainly, the relation of blood was weak, if not nonexistent, but that was irrelevant. Lucius had claimed Severus as family.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, Lucius had just made a mistake of monstrous proportions. He hadn’t been able to think of any plausible excuse, so he’d spat out an explanation that any un-indoctrinated first-year half-blood might accept. Practically all Pureblooded families shared blood ties with each other, but those ties meant nothing unless they were directly affirmed by both individual parties. Lucius had just (accidentally, Severus was sure) tethered himself to the child of a disgraced member of Pureblood society, and there was no going back now. Such a claim could not be revoked once it was made.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Wow</em>,” Severus said, and meant it. “I don’t know what to say. I never thought I would have family here at Hogwarts.” There, he had just solidified the familial bond by acknowledging it himself.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius was pale and his hands trembled slightly as he spoke; he, too, had undoubtedly realized the unintended significance of his words. “I would appreciate it if you could keep this between the two of us. While I am thrilled to have another member of the family—” (Severus doubted it) “—I am afraid that others may not feel the same, especially considering…”</p><p> </p><p>Severus took pity on him. Abraxas Malfoy’s temper was infamous, and Severus would not have wanted to be in Lucius’ shoes for all the gold in the Malfoy vaults. “Especially considering my mother’s status within the Prince family?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, exactly,” Lucius said with relief.</p><p> </p><p>Severus nodded. “I appreciate you telling me this,” he said gravely. “It has always been difficult for me, never knowing the magical side of my family.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius unsuccessfully hid a wince at the mention that Severus was a half-blood, but he seemed to perk up after a moment. “I can only imagine so,” he said with feeling. “You live in a Muggle village, do you not?”</p><p> </p><p>“I do.”</p><p> </p><p>“What it it…like?” Lucius asked, leaning forward over the table and lowering his voice as though he was afraid someone might overhear. “I’ve heard that Muggles still relieve themselves into holes in the ground and bathe in rivers. Is it true?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus blinked. “No, it’s not true. Haven’t you ever been in the Muggle world?”</p><p> </p><p>“Never. My parents are afraid I’ll catch something.”</p><p> </p><p>“Come visit me during break and I’ll show you,” Severus said without thinking. He almost immediately wished that he could take back his words, but then he thought better of it. It would be worth it if</p><p> </p><p>Lucius could learn some tolerance and never join the Dark Lord at all.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius reared back. “Oh, no, I possibly couldn’t, I’m going to France for the holiday.” It seemed that Severus needn’t worry about Lucius encountering his father.</p><p> </p><p>“If you ever change your mind…” Severus let the offer hang. “Seeing as we are family, that is.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, yes,” Lucius murmured, rising. “I’m afraid I must complete my Astronomy homework, but this has been a very interesting conversation. Have a nice night.”</p><p> </p><p>He disappeared faster than a Jew during the Inquisition, leaving Severus to digest the conversation.</p><p> </p><p>That had honestly just happened, hadn’t it? It changed <em>everything</em>. Having claimed Severus as a member of his family (which implied familial intimacy) when Severus was only very technically a member (and through a claim of blood, too, which was a bit different than a claim of fellowship), Lucius would be obligated to stick up for Severus as he would for his own brother. And since Severus had acknowledged the claim himself, that meant that Lucius could turn to Severus for assistance without hesitation, as family was meant to turn to one another for aid. Perhaps it would have been better for Severus to have left it one-sided, but his goal was to nudge Lucius back onto the straight and narrow, not only to gain advantages for himself.</p><p> </p><p>The familial claiming wasn’t magic <em>per se</em>, but considering how strictly it was adhered to within wizarding society, it may as well have been an Unbreakable Vow.</p><p> </p><p>Severus was now practically Lucius’ brother.</p><p> </p><p>He honestly didn’t know how he felt about that.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Wizard Swears</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Severus was on his way to the Great Hall for dinner when he overheard a whispered conversation. He paused at the juncture of an unused side corridor, whereupon he began to eavesdrop shamelessly on two of his least favorite classmates. Leaning against a moth-eaten tapestry, he folded his arms over his chest and waited. He could be a little late to another spirited discussion on the metaphysics of ghosthood at the Ravenclaw table if it meant he knew what was going on in the archenemy department.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t believe you got <em>Dungbombs</em>,” Black was saying, voice touched with awe and just the slightest hint of envy.</p><p> </p><p>“My dad sent them to me,” Potter giggled. “He said that he used crates of them when he was at Hogwarts. My mum doesn’t know, believe me. Who should we use them on?”</p><p> </p><p>Judging from Black’s silence, he was deep in thought. Severus hoped Black didn’t overexert himself; if he managed to give himself an aneurysm by thinking too hard, then Severus would be in the radius of involvement. The last thing he wanted to do was gain acclaim by saving a fellow student’s life.</p><p> </p><p>Then, he wondered if he <em>could</em>, the way things were now. He knew three different potions off the top of his head that would efficiently target and repair hemorrhaging, but they were all fairly complicated, and each required at least two hours’ brewing. Madam Pomfrey might have access to one or all three of them, but Black could very well die before she got to him. There were spells to accomplish the same thing, but Severus was ashamed to admit that he knew none of them. He was a Potions Master, not a Mediwizard, dammit.</p><p> </p><p>Sorry, Black, he thought, with only the barest thrill of glee tingling down his spine. If you fall down in convulsions right here, I have every excuse to let you expire.</p><p> </p><p>He stopped, momentarily horrified with himself, but at that instant Black finally found his voice, so he tucked that cancerous piece of himself away to be examined in depth later.</p><p> </p><p>“You remember that Snape bloke we met on the train?” Black offered, and Severus’ blood ran cold. “He was Sorted into Ravenclaw, but remember? He wanted to be in Slytherin.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus could hear Potter suck in his breath hard through his teeth. “Well, yeah,” he said hesitatingly, “but the Hat put him in Ravenclaw after all, so he can’t be that bad. Why, what happened?”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s a greasy git,” Black snarled. “He walks around so high and mighty, oh, look at me, I’m so smart, I’m such a Ravenclaw, I’m so much better than you. Just a few Dungbombs, James, please. It’ll be worth it just to see the look on his ugly face.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ fingers had slowly tightened so hard onto his wand that his knuckles were bloodless and there were shooting pains up to his elbow. He was trembling with fury; he couldn’t have hexed Black within an inch of his life even if he wanted to (and <em>oh</em>, did he want to) because he couldn’t have aimed worth a Knut.</p><p> </p><p>“Siri? What happened? What did he do?” Potter’s voice had that singular quality that had rarely ever been directed at Severus, save by Lily and Eileen. There were many words that could be used to describe it—gentle came to mind, as did concerned, sympathetic, and sincere, along with a host of others. But the word that would fit best was caring—not the absent-minded care allotted to a virtual stranger, as Severus was to and felt for his dorm mates, but the honest care extended to people one was genuinely fond of.</p><p> </p><p>When had that happened? It was only the second week of term, for Merlin’s sake!</p><p> </p><p>There was more silence.</p><p> </p><p>“He defended my family,” Black said an eternity later, in a small, wounded voice. “He told me that I’m going to be disowned because I don’t meet their standards. He said that I don’t deserve to have House-Elves clean up after me, and that I’m nothing without my family’s money.”</p><p> </p><p>“He said that?” There was no mistaking Potter’s building rage, so much like his son in that regard.</p><p> </p><p>“And—he had just annoyed Bellatrix, my cousin—in Slytherin—she sat at his seat and he tricked her to make her get out—but then he told me all that—and—I thought he—not that he would <em>understand</em>, but that—maybe he would be <em>nice</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus was getting fed up with Black’s bleating, so he turned his back on the conversation, but then what Black had said hit him and he felt like calling himself nine kinds of fool. The Blacks were a Dark, pureblooded family. He had known that. Following that, its members would naturally all be Sorted into House Slytherin. It was tradition, and House Slytherin ran on tradition. (And black magic, but that didn’t look very good on promotional material.) Black, though, had to be special, so he made himself into the black sheep of the family (no pun intended) by being Sorted into Gryffindor. He was almost certainly being shunned by the members of the society from whence he came.</p><p> </p><p>Severus was dizzy with this revelation, perhaps more so than he ought to have been. His dream-self had known, he realized, but then his dream-self loathed Black with the passion of a thousand burning suns. His dream-self hadn’t eavesdropped on a conversation in a little-used corridor, either. His dream-self hadn’t suddenly understood the injury done unto Black.</p><p> </p><p>Black was <em>eleven years old</em>, for God’s sake.</p><p> </p><p>And so was Severus.</p><p> </p><p>Black hadn’t been trying to be an arrogant arse when he approached Severus in the library yesterday. He was the sort who thrived on attention; he needed constant praise and reassurance. Severus’ dream-self had taken this to mean that Black was no different than Lucius Malfoy or Crabbe and Goyle, albeit with a different House tie.</p><p> </p><p>But, now that he thought about it, all those with whom Black would normally associate had abandoned him. That would certainly account for his closeness with Potter—Black would cling to the first hand offered to him in friendship. Moreover, that would account for Black’s approach yesterday. Black was trying to expand his circle of acquaintances, as he, a blood-traitor, was no longer welcomed among most Purebloods. It was likely that he had already won over most or all of House Gryffindor, as he was wont to do, so it made sense that he would set his sights on the other two non-hostile Houses.</p><p> </p><p>Severus tolerated most social interaction. Black <em>needed</em> it. Severus now found himself really marveling that Black had survived over a decade in Azkaban with most his mind intact, since Dementors were a little less than likely to pull up a chair and exchange riotous stories over a pint or three of stout.</p><p> </p><p>So, anyway, Black’s air of affected arrogance had been just that—affected. He had probably been disdaining his homework just to demonstrate that his company was more desirable than good marks, a strategy which would work wonders on Gryffindors, but which would have limited success on Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs. It was Severus who had failed miserably in that interaction.</p><p> </p><p>Shite, he thought.</p><p> </p><p>Actually, he didn’t really think “shite.” He thought of a magical expletive so eldritch, powerful, and foul that wizards across the globe had banned together to wipe all traces of its existence from the annals of human knowledge. Severus himself had learned of it when serving under the Dark Lord and had gone to great lengths to acquire it for himself for use in those singular circumstances in which even the “F-bomb” couldn’t express the correct depth and breadth of emotion. To say it would be to rend the tendons from one’s joints and the skin from one’s flesh; to read it would be to everafter see it branded on the back of one’s eyelids in burning, blood-red runes; to write it would be to weep tears of blood and brain fluid; to hear it would be to lose complete, immediate, and humiliating control of one’s bowels. So, essentially, yes, one could say that it wound down to the same effect as “shite.”</p><p> </p><p>Dimly, Severus heard Potter agree that Snape made a suitable target indeed, but with rather stronger language. Lovely, he thought bitterly. He’d almost managed to avoid becoming Snivellus again, but it seemed that history was bound to repeat itself. Blast it all.</p><p> </p><p><em>Shite</em>, he thought again, rather more emphatically this time.</p><p> </p><p>He pressed himself against the tapestry as they left the corridor, holding still and keeping quiet. Potter might want to be an Auror, but he hadn’t learned the need for Constant Vigilance yet. Neither of the Gryffindors saw him, and Severus waited several minutes until he deemed it safe to follow them to the Great Hall.</p><p> </p><p>His mind was a-whir all through dinner, though luckily he was distracted by a fascinating argument concerning the theory of displaced mass. This was part of the Transfiguration curriculum; obviously, even though one could transfigure a hat stand into a giraffe, the additional mass had to come from somewhere. Or, it did as long as one was creating a giraffe-weighted giraffe. Therefore, the popular theory was that additional mass came from the same place that Vanished mass went to when it was Vanished. However, nobody could say for sure where that hypothetical place was, so it remained a theory.</p><p> </p><p>It also didn’t help him with his problem. Maybe Lily would know what to do, but if he sought her help then he’d have to tell her how he had lampooned Black’s sense of self-importance, and she would sigh at him. He supposed he’d faced enough of her sighs to be partially immune by now.</p><p> </p><p>“You said <em>what</em> to him?” Lily asked, incredulous, voice going up half an octave, though she kept it pitched low. He’d caught her at the tail end of the meal, and now they were huddled together in the shadows of a niche in the wall where a statue of Someone Important had used to be until a pitched hallway battle over Quidditch stats had reduced it to dust a few days before.</p><p> </p><p>“You heard me,” Severus said, feeling defensive.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Sev</em>,” Lily scolded. “That was a terrible thing to say. Black’s family is very unhappy that he’s a Gryffindor.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, I know that <em>now</em>,” Severus snapped. “Black said as much.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily stared at him and then sighed. “You were eavesdropping again, weren’t you?”</p><p> </p><p>“Is that really important?”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t know what you should do. Why don’t you just apologize?”</p><p> </p><p>“Then he’d know that I was eavesdropping, and that would probably make him even more against me,” Severus said. “Besides, I said nothing that wasn’t true. It’s not my fault if he took it too much to heart.” He noticed with a shudder that a petulant note had worked its way into his tone.</p><p> </p><p>Lily stared at him some more, and Severus tried not to squirm. He’d always been sure that, had Lily learned the procedure, her Animagus form would have been a cat. She had that way of staring at someone unblinkingly until the intensity of her gaze was like a red-hot poker, enough to draw confessions, true or false, and then when she spoke, her words had that much more weight to them.</p><p> </p><p>“You of all people should be kind to him.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus looked away.</p><p> </p><p>There was silence for a moment, and then Lily sighed. “I know why you did it. He’s annoying, isn’t he? He’s always going on about Quidditch or hanging around with that Potter boy. But we can be nice until things calm down with his family.”</p><p> </p><p>“I thought you didn’t mind Potter,” Severus said. “You didn’t seem to on the train.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, you didn’t seem to mind Black then either. Don’t change the subject.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus gave her a questioning look, and she rolled her eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“They’re prats, really. I guess we just didn’t notice then. Potter’s always trying to bother me, and he and Black egg each other on. They lose points for Gryffindor a lot. And they’ve gotten Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin to go along with it, even though I’m sure they’d rather be left alone. Peter and Remus are nice boys, not like Potter and Black at all.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus smiled tightly. “As long as they don’t come up with a ridiculous nickname for themselves and go about wreaking havoc in the school.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily snorted. “Don’t give them any ideas. Hey, I have to do my Transfiguration homework. Want to come with me?” She caught Severus’ sleeve up in her hand and began dragging him towards the library. At this rate, he was going to be practically living there. Not that he minded, especially if he had Lily to keep him company. The warmth of her hand burned through his sleeve.</p><p> </p><p>“You had Potions today, right? Did you turn in that massive essay you wrote?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus coughed. “Yeah. But I don’t think Professor Slughorn was very impressed. He told me that size doesn’t matter and that it’s better to go under the set length with pertinent information than to have a lot of words but little substance.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily harrumphed. “That was rude of him.”</p><p> </p><p>“No, I think he’s just sick of students trying to look smart and increasing his workload. I’d hate to be a teacher.” A spasm ran up his spine as memories of just that flew past his eyes. He suddenly felt the inexplicable need to take away House points for minor infractions and bring terror to the hearts of first-years. If nothing else, he swore to himself that he would at least avoid that heinous fate.</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t know, it could be fun,” Lily objected, and Severus twitched violently. Late nights of grading poorly-written essays, days of never-ending lectures to students who couldn’t care less, years of repetition, repetition, <em>repetition</em>—Severus broke out into a cold sweat at the thought. It had been the farthest thing from “fun” that he could imagine. “Hell” was a bit more accurate.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” he said hoarsely. “<em>No</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sev, are you all right? You’re really pale,” Lily said with concern, reaching up to lay her hand across his forehead. “Sev, you’re clammy. Do we need to go see the nurse?”</p><p> </p><p>“She’s called a Mediwitch,” Severus said distantly. “I’m fine. Let’s just go.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily frowned at him but removed her hand, pulling him onward again. “If you feel sick, tell me. I think Madam Pince would kill you if you threw up in her library.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus privately thought that Madam Pince would do everything in her power to completely ruin Severus’ life, like refuse to check out books to him anymore. His stomach churned. Now that was a fate worse than death: boredom. And it was at that moment that he knew he had truly become a Ravenclaw.</p><p> </p><p>On their way, they passed Lucius Malfoy, who accidentally made eye contact with Severus and immediately skittered into the nearest corridor, where, judging from the sound of his footfalls, he broke into a run.</p><p> </p><p>Lily’s eyebrows drew together and her fingers tightened in the sleeve of Severus’ robe. “What,” she said, enunciating clearly, “is his problem?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus tugged her forwards. There were degrees to Lily’s ire—when she stared enunciating, it was time to draw her attention to something else, or else she would deliver a tongue-lashing so severe that the victim would be lucky to retain the skin on his back.</p><p> </p><p>Enunciation wasn’t nearly as bad as speechlessness—when Lily became incapable of forming words, it was time to duck and cover.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll tell you later, Lily,” Severus promised. He sighed internally. To disarm Lily’s wrath, he would have to emphasize the unpleasant rumors about Lucius’ father and play down the fact that the whole mess had been incidental on Lucius’ part. He wasn’t surprised that Lucius was avoiding him after yesterday. It was a viable strategy, though Severus wouldn’t play along forever. He’d have to consider his next move.</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>The next morning was mostly uneventful. Severus woke up, got dressed, listened to another depressingly energetic Ravenclaw table deliberation (this one was on fate—if things were really written in the stars, how come they couldn’t be avoided?), and went to Transfiguration again, where they had to turn beetles into buttons. Severus had already outed himself in that class, as it were, so he absent-mindedly transfigured a solid steel button, an ornately carved silver button, and a soft cloth button embroidered with yellow and white daisies. He could feel McGonagall watching him, but he had archly decided that he Did Not Care.</p><p> </p><p>He went to History of Magic, a class which his classmates unequivocally enjoyed; the opportunity to take a nap in the middle of the school day was no small thing. Ravenclaws had a system: they chose a scribe for every class period to take notes, which were then duplicated and passed around. The other Houses had similar processes because even the most hard-working Hufflepuff recognized that sleep was superior to listening to yet another droned lecture on the Goblin Wars of 1056.</p><p> </p><p>Lunch, as always, was a Ravenclaw special—Silencing Spells, and whether they created an invisible barrier that blocked sound waves from passing through (but wouldn’t that create an echo effect within the spell?) or whether they simply halted the movement of the particles that carried the sound. Severus didn’t see that there was much of a difference.</p><p> </p><p>After lunch was disaster, formerly known as Charms. It wasn’t that Severus had forgotten that Ravenclaws were with Gryffindors for this class; he had just made the assumption that Black and Potter wouldn’t be so blisteringly stupid as to make a move against him here, in Flitwick’s direct line of sight.</p><p> </p><p>This would teach him to make assumptions where Gryffindors were concerned, he decided, waiting for Flitwick to cast some spell to neutralize the sickly-sweet stench of human shite that clung to him. It might take Flitwick a while, though, as he was at the moment occupied with raking the offenders over the coals. The rest of the class was gagging and jostling for a breath of fresh air at the opened windows, save Lily, who had been right next to Severus and so smelled just as bad as he did. She’d already taken her vengeance; Black and Potter sported matching sets of painful-looking welts.</p><p> </p><p>“Feel less inclined to homicide now?” Severus coughed to her.</p><p> </p><p>“Just a bit,” she said coldly. “I would have gotten Lupin and Pettigrew too, but I don’t think they were involved.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus was inclined to agree, considering that 1) Lupin and Pettigrew hadn’t been anywhere near Black and Potter when they’d made their attack, and 2) Pettigrew was currently dry-heaving out the window because of the smell. Lupin was patting his shoulders consolingly.</p><p> </p><p>Flitwick turned sharply on his heel to face the class. His squeaky voice had become low and dangerous with anger when he addressed them. “As Mr. Black and Mr. Potter saw fit to disrupt today’s lesson, they will be cleaning up their mess. The rest of you may leave. Please take a shower.”</p><p> </p><p>Most people cheered. Pettigrew retched again.</p><p> </p><p>“Mr. Lupin, please escort Mr. Pettigrew to the infirmary. Mr. Black and Mr. Potter, you will come with me.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus wondered what had caused such a difference in execution. Black and Potter had been much more devious in the dream; they were almost Slytherin in the way that they rigged pranks so that everyone knew they had done it, but there was no solid evidence against them. Maybe he had made them so angry that they had disregarded common sense; maybe they hadn’t realized how fatal it would be to attack a Ravenclaw in front of his Head of House. Either way, there was a sinking feeling in his stomach that this would only compound their desire for revenge.</p><p> </p><p>“Those miserable little toe-rags,” Lily muttered, stomping harder than was strictly necessary over chilly stone floors. “Immature little idiots. Oh, we have a problem with something Sev said. No, let’s not confront him about it like rational creatures. Let’s pelt him with Dungbombs, and oh, we’ll hit Lily too, because she’s friends with him. Why, yes, we <em>do</em> sleep with teddy bears and sit down to pee. How did you ever know?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus bit down hard on a smile.</p><p> </p><p>“Those little brats had better watch themselves. I won’t stand for them picking on you.”</p><p> </p><p>“Thank you, Lily,” he said softly, touched.</p><p> </p><p>She flapped a hand at him. “None needed, Sev. Besides, they got me too. I don’t think I’ve ever smelled this bad in my life.”</p><p> </p><p>They parted ways for their respective Houses. Severus’ year mates were already in their dorm, but as Severus had been the victim of several direct hits, they wordlessly gave him precedence for showering. Standing under the spray (which was quite literally a magical experience (the water temperature automatically adjusted itself according to his preferences)), he scrubbed down until his skin was rubbed red and he couldn’t catch even the faintest whiff of poo.</p><p> </p><p>Then, he began the intensive process of washing his hair, which hung lank but not yet greasy around his shoulders. (That would be a product of puberty, according to the dream. After Lily’s—after Lily, he had stopped caring about his appearance, since its upkeep wouldn’t achieve any ends.) As he lathered, he plotted. The best and smartest path to take would be to convince Black and Potter that it had all been a genuine misunderstanding. Ravenclaws were not known for their tact, after all. He wouldn’t go so far as to kowtow, but he would humble himself to apologize if it would stop the snowball’s descent into Hell.</p><p> </p><p>(There was a mixed metaphor in there. Or maybe not.)</p><p> </p><p>If that didn’t work, well—he had already become something of a teacher’s pet. That wouldn’t wholly protect him, but it would provide some leeway. After today’s little stunt, he doubted that Black and Potter would try anything anywhere in the vicinity of a teacher. That meant that the halls would be prime real estate for ambushes and the like, so he’d have to be careful. It would be dangerous to go anywhere alone, but since Lily wasn’t always with him, he’d either have to make friends with his year mates or travel exclusively by Hogwarts’ main passageways, which remained mostly stationary within the castle and thus were always full of other students.</p><p> </p><p>He could do it. It might make his day a little harder, but then he’d been beating the odds his entire life. Besides, he knew things that would make grown men cry. If push came to shove, he would make Black and Potter rue their respective inabilities to grow up. (Perhaps literally. He knew a fine curse for stunting growth.)</p><p> </p><p>Severus rinsed out his hair and reached out to turn the water off. Yes, that was a good plan. Reparations if possible, and if not, avoidance. These things had a way of spiraling rapidly out of control, but if he didn’t throw fat on the fire, he might not get burned. He dressed in quick, jerky movements, got his shoes on, and slid his wand up his sleeve. He ought to get a proper holster for it one of these days.</p><p> </p><p>After the aborted Charms period had ended, he went to his next class with Hufflepuff. Dinner was after that, but he had resolved to draw this matter to a conclusion as soon as possible.</p><p> </p><p>He wasn’t at all sure where Flitwick had taken Black and Potter for their punishment, so he skulked around until he saw them leaving Flitwick’s office, sleeves rolled up to their elbows and scowls on their faces. Severus waited in the shadows to intercept them, out of sight but not earshot of Flitwick’s open office door. He braced himself and stepped out into their paths.</p><p> </p><p>They startled and he didn’t allow them any time to recover. “Have I offended you somehow, Mr. Black, Mr. Potter?” he said, allowing ice to form on his words. He fancied that the air dropped a few degrees. “Tell me, have I done something to merit your attentions?”</p><p> </p><p>Potter recovered first. “You know what you did,” he growled, stepping into Severus’ personal space.</p><p> </p><p>Severus glared. “I’m afraid I don’t read minds. What did I allegedly do?”</p><p> </p><p>“How dare you—” Potter breathed, taking a step even closer to Severus and leaning so far forward towards him that their noses were almost touching. Severus drew on his resolve and stayed put, even though his skin was crawling at the thought of breathing Potter’s tainted air.</p><p> </p><p>“James,” Black said suddenly, and Potter turned his head, much to Severus’ relief. Black motioned for Potter to stand down, taking a step forward himself. He smiled a cold, sharp smile. “Snape, remember the library, oh, two days ago?”</p><p> </p><p>“What about it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Aren’t you supposed to be smart? Don’t you remember what you said?”</p><p> </p><p>“About your family, specifically, you mean?” Severus asked. He widened his eyes in an approximation of surprise. “Oh, is that it? I had believed that I made an unbiased observation of your situation. Did I say something that was untrue?”</p><p> </p><p>Black hesitated. It was only the space of a breath, but to Severus it was as significant as a white flag in wartime.</p><p> </p><p>Got you, he thought.</p><p> </p><p>Black would take the way out that Severus had just offered him. It was the only way for him to preserve his pride.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes,” Black said, then said it again more emphatically. “Yes. Every single thing that you said about me and my family was untrue, and I demand that you acknowledge it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” Severus said, tilting his head like he didn’t quite understand what the fuss was about. “Then I apologize for unjustly slandering your family name. It was incorrect for me to do so, especially to your face. However, I wonder if it was correct for you to throw Dungbombs at me when you could have expressed your grievances more efficiently, as we have just done.”</p><p> </p><p>Black’s face twisted like he had bitten into something bitter, but he extended his hand. “I accept your apology, and I regret the wrongs done to you and your friend. We didn’t mean to hit Lily. She was just standing by you and James missed.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus glanced at Potter, who was scowling at the floor like it had offended his mother. Black tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a meaningful look. Potter spoke through gritted teeth. “I apologize for throwing Dungbombs at you. You need to watch what you say.”</p><p> </p><p>Black stepped in again. “We’ll apologize to Lily the next time we see her.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus raised his eyebrows. “No more Dungbombs, then? Splendid.” He thought he saw Black’s eye twitch. “I will refrain from commenting on your family. Have a good night.” Half-expecting to receive a jinx between the shoulder blades for his trouble, he spun smartly on his heel and left.</p><p> </p><p>Despite his misgivings, he made it back to Ravenclaw Tower unmolested, whereupon he collapsed, exhausted and fully-clothed, onto his bed. That had gone better than he had even dared imagine, and now he deserved a nap.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The Second Dream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Professor Ahlgrim, the Astronomy teacher, was fairly well liked. He let students use his thousand-Galleon telescope to look at clusters of cities on the Continent, rarely assigned essays, and could usually be counted on to write excuse notes if a student overslept after a night of stargazing.</p><p> </p><p>He did, however, believe that crater maps and star charts were the absolute most vital part of a Hogwarts education. To that end, when there was a streak of unusually clear weather and a very bright moon a few days after Severus’ final altercation with Black and Potter, he had had alternating classes of first-years out on the Astronomy tower at midnight for a week. Aside from general grouchiness and sleep deprivation everyone felt, there was just one other issue: Severus was not fond of the magic associated with moonlight. To say the least.</p><p> </p><p>Even after he had graduated from Hogwarts, his dream-self had been perpetually sleepless on nights when primal magic saturated every root, leaf, twig, and rock, when wild things came out to play. He had learned his lesson years ago, when a creature out of a nightmare had almost vivisected him and scattered the remains. Even now, years and a lifetime distant, even before the sky darkened to perfect velvet and the moon became wholly visible, Severus always felt its presence as soon as it crossed over the horizon; a shiver shuddering down his spine that urged him to take shelter indoors.</p><p> </p><p>Naturally, this made Astronomy classes hell.</p><p> </p><p>Naturally, Severus was lucky enough to have class the night of the full moon.</p><p> </p><p>Naturally, Professor Ahlgrim wanted them to trace its path across the sky, so they were scheduled to be outside starting at moonrise, just as the sun was setting.</p><p> </p><p>Ravenclaw was with Slytherin, which always meant basic back-and-forth insults and some Slytherins getting caught trying to copy off a Ravenclaw’s paper. This time, however, there was dead silence. It grew more pronounced as the moon’s jaundiced eye peered over the far-off mountains. The students watched the sun sink with looks of dismay, huddled together in the middle of the tower. Professor Ahlgrim’s reassurances fell flat. Something about this moon threatened. The sun had halfway disappeared already. Severus held his breath, waiting. One of the Slytherins whimpered under his breath. The moon was straining to crest the tallest peak. The smallest sliver of molten gold clung to the horizon. Someone shivered violently against his shoulder.</p><p> </p><p>The sun set.</p><p> </p><p>The moon rose.</p><p> </p><p>And the screaming started.</p><p> </p><p>Some tortured creature keened with all the agony it knew, an agony that increased tenfold with every passing moment. Professor Ahlgrim jerked so hard he almost dropped his thousand-Galleon telescope. Uttering an expletive unsuitable for the ears of impressionable small children, he barked, “Class is over. Everyone, inside.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus trailed after the others, glancing first over the tower’s chest-high wall in the direction of the Whomping Willow and the monster that it protected. Of course, it wasn’t a <em>human</em> screaming—or it wasn’t quite a human, at least. Severus knew what it was, even if Professor Ahlgrim didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Werewolf.</p><p> </p><p>Severus didn’t sleep that night—he couldn’t. Every time he shut his eyes he remembered the bloody glint of moonlight upon teeth, the slow spread of sticky-warm saliva across his collarbones, the rank breath against his throat. His bedcovers seemed to him the weight of twisted paws on his chest, pinning him down. He remembered the hunt, how the creature had advancing, coughing growls emitting like malevolent chuckles; the coppery taste of terror in his mouth. He remembered being pulled to safety by the person he hated most in the world, and worst of all he relearned the bitter truth of it all—the world would always side against him.</p><p> </p><p>Always had, and always would.</p><p> </p><p>Dumbledore had called it a prank. Sirius Black had almost gotten away with murder. And Severus had been told to be grateful to Potter.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>With these thoughts seething in his mind, Severus lay wide-awake and wide-eyed til the desolate howling faded into ragged silence and he could push the memories back where they belonged.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran up slab stone stairs embedded into the side of a mountain/mist curled around his head/mist settled in his lungs/the air was heavy and sweet/with the smell of green things/growing things/a jungle on a mountainside/mountains floating past him through the mist/Sirius ran past Remus/sitting on a stone step/sitting in a silver cage/head buried in his hands/a classic carriage of despair</p><p> </p><p>like he’d been carved out of stone/Michelangelo’s protégé/brown eyes/grieving eyes/eyes like dead leaves floating in a pond/wet/delicate/so easy to tear apart</p><p> </p><p>eyes that welcomed/eyes that damned/yes his eyes were damning now/looking at him/blame/blame/guilt and blame/teeth bared in a mockery of a smile/Remus’ teeth that bloodied his own lips/blame guilt/self-blame self-guilt/what’s the difference/there’s no difference/not to him</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick stone/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/looking for/looking for something/looking for what</p><p> </p><p>there/Lily there/hair like fire/wildfire hearthfire/devours/destroys/warms/welcomes/leaning over a deep round green pool/green like her eyes/there had been less water in her eyes once</p><p> </p><p>Lily Lily dressed in white/white like innocence/white like lies/white like Ophelia/drowning/drowned amongst her flowers</p><p> </p><p>careful/Sirius shouted/careful/don’t fall in/don’t get over your head/careful Lily/don’t let it put out your flame</p><p> </p><p>but she leaned over farther/hair hanging down/a curtain/pressed her hands into the water/brought it to her mouth/drank deeply/gasped/cried out</p><p> </p><p>because knowing hurts/a lesson Sirius knew only too well</p><p> </p><p>Sirius wanted to stop by her/help her/but he was still running/still looking for something/and besides anyhow/she had made her own choice/there was nothing he could do for her now</p><p> </p><p>isn’t life just choices/choices/better not make the wrong choices/what are the wrong choices/you never know until it’s too late</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick stone/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/looking for/looking for something/looking for what</p><p> </p><p>a boy/no/a man/a man without a hand/Peter/the man was Peter/what happened to Peter’s hand</p><p> </p><p>Peter looking down at it like he didn’t understand it either</p><p> </p><p>then Peter looked up/Peter’s eyes were wrong/they weren’t soft anymore/they were hard/excited/a smile like a rat/a greedy smile/greedy for what/Sirius didn’t know/Peter knew/Peter knew what he was greedy for/Peter reached out/tried to snatch at Sirius/Peter grabbed at Sirius’ legs/Sirius stumbled/Peter crowed in victory/Sirius got away/he didn’t know how/running on four legs instead of two/he got away from the man with no hand/the man with the silver hand/he left Peter howling/Sirius didn’t dare look back/he ran on</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick stone/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/looking for/looking for something/looking for what</p><p> </p><p>ahead/a path that diverged from his/a path that didn’t go where he wanted to go/he ran past/but as he passed/he turned his head to see/curiosity killed the cat after all</p><p> </p><p>a figure walking down the path/a shadowed figure/a figure wreathed in darkness/a figure Sirius knew only too well/Sirius skidded to a halt on wet slick stone</p><p> </p><p>Regulus/don’t go down there/you don’t have to go there/Reggie/Reggie/can you hear me/Regulus come back</p><p> </p><p>Regulus didn’t even turn his head/he walked into the dark/into the tangle of brambles/into the web of lies/with sure and steady footsteps/a sure and steady stride</p><p> </p><p>Sirius wept/he shuddered/he ran on/because/Regulus had chosen/and so Regulus would die</p><p> </p><p>night suddenly/mist exchanged for biting winds/mountains now a flat broad plain/a playing field/a Quidditch field/goals at either side looming/looming/silhouetted silver against the sky/like dreamcatchers/but these caught the good dreams not the bad/caught the good dreams/burnt them away</p><p> </p><p>Frank there/Alice there/smiling shyly/under the goalposts/Frank reached out for Alice’s hand/Alice smiled and gave it/Sirius shouted/hands outstretched</p><p> </p><p>wait/he cried/wait/don’t you know you’ll die</p><p> </p><p>he gritted his teeth/closed his streaming eyes—</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick stone/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/looking for/looking for something/looking for what</p><p> </p><p>his path again branched off/to where Regulus had gone/Snape stood there/blocking the path/one foot on and one foot off/undecided or lying/draped in black robes/mourning robes/robes with long sleeves that concealed/past sins and past regrets</p><p> </p><p>get out of my way/Sirius said</p><p> </p><p>Snape smiled a colorless smile/I’m not in your way/even if I’d like to be</p><p> </p><p>he held up two hands/a potion in each hand/one gray as dirty water/one bright as a phoenix’s tears</p><p> </p><p>choose/he said/one will kill you/the other will save you/pick your poison/Sirius Black</p><p> </p><p>I don’t want to/Sirius said</p><p> </p><p>you’ll get one or the other eventually/Snape said/choose while you still have the choice/choose or I’ll choose for you</p><p> </p><p>not now/Sirius said/and ran on</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran up slab stone stairs embedded into the side of a cliff/sea spray curled around his head/sea spray settled in his lungs/the air was sharp and salty/with the smell of dead things/living things/an ocean under a starry night/nebulas spinning through the sky/feet thudding on wet slick stone/stone crusted with thick white salt/white like purity/white like lies</p><p> </p><p>there/Andy/walking down the steps/walking down the cliff/walking away from Sirius/holding something to her chest/he met her eyes/she smiled/ruefully</p><p> </p><p>come with me/he said</p><p> </p><p>my daughter/she replied/and walked on</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/eyes stinging with salt/there/there/Cissy there/holding something to her chest/walking down a path like Regulus’ path/a path across the cliff face/dangerously close to the vicious waves/the breaking waves/the waves that tore and ate/he called out to her/holding out a hand/she turned and met his eyes</p><p> </p><p>come with me/he said</p><p> </p><p>my son/she replied/and walked on</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick stone/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/looking for/looking for something/looking for what</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran up slab stone stairs embedded into the side of a tower/sunlight curled around his head/heat settled in his lungs/the air was strong and shaking/with the smell of iron and stone/a prison in the middle of nowhere/clouds hanging in the sky/stairs winding around the tower/up/up/up/until he reached a door/a red door/red as cherry popsicles/red as well-aged wine/red as arterial blood/a knocker like a lion’s head/Sirius knocked and waited and waited</p><p> </p><p>but he was done with waiting—</p><p> </p><p>he put his shoulder to the door and pushed/pushed with all his might/the door swung open/James stood at the window/his back to Sirius</p><p> </p><p>James turned/Sirius recoiled/James’s mouth was red/red/red/red like arterial blood/red like the door with the lion’s head/James laughed/smiled/wholly at his ease/held up a cherry popsicle/half-eaten/dripping red/James flung it away/wiped at his mouth/but only managed to smear the red/red like well-aged wine/red like arterial blood</p><p> </p><p>catch me/James said</p><p> </p><p>Sirius laughed/I have/you’re here</p><p> </p><p>no/James said/I’m not</p><p> </p><p>and he was gone/the curtains fluttered at his passage/Sirius threw himself at the window/looked down/nothing there except James/running down a dusty road/Sirius cursed/slapped a hand down on the hot stone windowsill/hurdled over it/hurled himself over to follow James</p><p> </p><p>falling/falling/then impact/rattling his teeth/jarring his spine/no more than a moment to compose himself/he had to follow James</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran down a wide dirt road lined with tall leafy trees/sweat curled around his head/dust settled in his lungs/the air was dry and cool/with the smell of water and shadow/a road in the middle of a forest/leading to nowhere in particular/dark clouds lurking in the sky/at the edge of the sky/James ran before him/just within his sight/running pell-mell/headlong/recklessly/like he always did</p><p> </p><p>James/Sirius shrieked/James wait for me</p><p> </p><p>catch me/James screamed back/Sirius barely heard him over the blood pounding in his ears/his feet pounding at the road/the breaths pounding in his lungs</p><p> </p><p>James ran past meadows/streams/burnt-out factories/hills pocked with bomb craters and littered with shells/houses still and empty with their doors swung open on rusty hinges/cataracts and straining dams/all the while running hard/Sirius couldn’t catch him</p><p> </p><p>James ran into a town/silent and haunted/shop signs swinging on broken hinges/windows shattered and gaping open/James ran past it all/Sirius ran behind him/always behind him/the dark clouds were overhead now/rain hit dry-baked earth like wishes/like curses/like regrets/rain made mud in Sirius’ eyes/under Sirius’s feet/Sirius ran on/ran on/feet thudding on wet slick earth/so easy/so easy to slip/lungs burning/running after James/always running after James</p><p> </p><p>running toward a house on a hill/old and imposing/paint peeling off the siding/gargoyles standing sentinel at their spouts/Sirius ran on/ran on/trying to catch James over wet slick earth/so easy/so easy to slip</p><p> </p><p>he slipped</p><p> </p><p>James darted ahead/up the slab stone stairs embedded in the side of the hill/layered with mud and rain water/he ran up the steep stairs/he disappeared behind the door/Sirius scrambled to pick himself up/scrabbled in the mud to find his footing/ran head-down/arms pumping at his sides</p><p> </p><p>Sirius ran up slab stone stairs embedded into the side of a hill/rain soaked his head/rain settled in his lungs/the air was heavy and dull/with the smell of river water/clay and mud/a ghost town on a hillside/running up broad gray stairs/slabs of stone half-buried in the earth/overgrown with moss and peat/mottled and smooth with age/up/up/up/until he reached a door/a green door/green as peat bogs/where bodies are sunk and hidden/green as forests or jungle pools/green as putrid jealousy/green as Lily’s eyes/a knocker like a serpent’s mouth/Sirius knocked and waited and waited</p><p> </p><p>but he was done with waiting—</p><p> </p><p>he put his shoulder to the door and pushed/pushed with all his might/the door swung open</p><p> </p><p>James did not stand there/Bellatrix did</p><p> </p><p>Bellatrix/eyes like coals or tortured fireflies/bloodless mouth and bloodied hands/James lay still behind her/motionless and breathless on the floor behind her/James lay on the floor behind her/in a pool of red/red as the red on his mouth/red as well-aged wine/red as arterial blood</p><p> </p><p>Sirius screamed</p><p> </p><p>Bellatrix reached out to Sirius/reached out to where he stood/Bellatrix shoved him hard in the chest/hit him with her bloody hands/shoved him off balance over the steps/he fell backwards/always falling/but this time he did not land, he just kept falling, falling, falling—</p><p> </p><p>Sirius Black fell through the Veil, and then he woke up.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If I wrote this chapter now, I would have formatted it differently (because in retrospect, this is kind of hard to read), but oh well. Live and learn and all that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Uneasy Truce</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was breakfast at the Gryffindor table and James was holding court as usual.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t believe Horace’s already assigned <em>another</em> essay,” James sighed, slumping down onto his forearms until his nose was nearly level with his porridge and his elbow was in Peter’s eggs.</p><p> </p><p>“Professor Slughorn, James,” Remus said, not looking up from his book although he looked exhausted enough to fall asleep on his thrice-emptied plate. He turned a page and reached for yet another slice of bacon.</p><p> </p><p>James intercepted Remus’ hand and slid the platter away before he could, smiling at him with the sort of condescending charm that made teachers mark him as a troublemaker. “Don’t be such a teacher’s pet, Remmy. He can’t hear us. Right, Sirius?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius heard his name and turned from where he had been staring at Snape at the Ravenclaw table. An adder among eagles. “What?” As though Snape could feel Sirius’ eyes on the back of his head, he twisted a little like he was about to glance over his shoulder and Sirius’ veins tightened with a thrill of fear.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Pick your poison, Sirius Black.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>James made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Nothing.” He pushed the bacon back toward Remus and turned to face Sirius. “What are you looking at? Doing a little <em>bird</em> watching?” He waggled his eyebrows and Evans winged a sausage at his head without interrupting her conversation with Alice.</p><p> </p><p>“Ow!” James went for his wand, but Remus was faster, snagging his wrist with the bacon-greasy fingers of his eating hand before any of the teachers could notice.</p><p> </p><p>“Nice shot, Evans.”</p><p> </p><p>“Why thanks, Black.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sirius! Whose side are you on?”</p><p> </p><p>“The winning side, duh.”</p><p> </p><p>“James, could you <em>try</em> not to lose us points before breakfast is even over?”</p><p> </p><p>“She started it!”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>You</em> started it, you prat!”</p><p> </p><p>“It was a joke! <em>Bird</em> watching! He was looking at the Ravenclaws!”</p><p> </p><p>“Still not funny.”</p><p> </p><p>“Knock it off, both of you,” Remus said. The dark circles under his eyes made him look more threatening than usual, or at least that was to what Sirius attributed James’s subsequent sulky silence. Peter giggled behind his hands then quailed under Sirius’ cold stare, pulling into himself and picking at the food on his plate with fingers that quivered a little.</p><p> </p><p>While James started stuffing his cheeks with congealed porridge in aggravated obedience, Sirius studied Remus’ profile out of the corner of his eye and wondered if he was really a werewolf. It wasn’t the sort of thing he could just ask, what with werewolves being Dark creatures and all, and shunned from society at large and all, and with their reputation of eating people and all. And Sirius <em>liked</em> Remus.</p><p> </p><p>And Remus probably wasn’t a werewolf anyway. It was just a stupid dream.</p><p> </p><p>But if he <em>was</em>—</p><p> </p><p>—if he <em>was</em>, maybe the rest was true too.</p><p> </p><p>James pressed on his swollen cheeks with the palms of both hands and squirted his porridge back into his bowl. Evans exclaimed in disgust and retaliated with another thrown sausage, but in her fury she missed James and nailed Peter between the eyes. He startled so badly he choked on his orange juice and spewed it all over the table and unlucky Frank across from him.</p><p> </p><p>A food fight ensued. Although Sirius participated with gleeful abandon, catapulting his eggs into Evans’ hair, he was comforted by the hard evidence that she and James would <em>never</em> like each other, much less ever want to get married. He took one last bite of his toast and flicked the jellied crust at Remus, who had been sitting somehow untouched in the midst of a hurricane of flying food. It stuck on his cheek and Remus looked up with murder in his eyes.</p><p> </p><p><em>Today is a good day to die</em>, Sirius thought, and ducked beneath the table, conveniently out of sight just as the teachers rolled up to hand out detentions. He crawled over rows of shifting, kicking legs to the far end of the Gryffindor table where the upper years sat, slithering up onto the bench between two surprised girls and settling himself there like he had every right in the world.</p><p> </p><p>“How you doin’?” Sirius said to them and the rest of the upper years who had paused to watch him emerge and reached out to snag another piece of toast, buttering it luxuriously to a backdrop of furious teacher noises.</p><p> </p><p>The girl to his left sputtered. “Did you just—?”</p><p> </p><p>“You can’t prove anything,” Sirius said. biting into his new toast.</p><p> </p><p>“You have jam in your hair.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius reached up and blindly pawed at the sticky spot until it was no less sticky but at least better hidden. “<em>Now</em> you can’t prove anything.” He beamed at her and took another bite and watched his accomplices ushered out of the dining hall without him. James caught his eye and glared, but Sirius just grinned at him and stole someone else’s glass of pumpkin juice to raise in a mock toast. From the smiles the upper years were trying to hide, Sirius surmised they were too amused to rat him out. He settled back, satisfied. As Cissy liked to say, a little panache could get you anywhere.</p><p> </p><p>Without his permission, his eyes drifted back over toward the Ravenclaw table and he thought hard while he munched on his toast. It was probably just a dream, no matter how hard Sirius’ heart had kicked in terror in his chest when he awoke and thought for a minute he was still falling. He hadn’t cried, not really, but he had curled into himself and quivered until Remus had shouted at him to get out of bed, minutes or maybe hours later. Maybe not a dream then, but a nightmare.</p><p> </p><p>But if it <em>wasn’t</em>—</p><p> </p><p>Well, it wasn’t like Sirius cared about his relationship with <em>Snape</em>…</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Severus poked at his scrambled eggs and bit back a yawn, half-heartedly listening to his Housemates arguing about whether goblins had been marginalized in the wizarding world. A quarter of them were getting heated, a quarter knew nothing about the subject and were arguing passionately on purely hypothetical moral grounds, the third quarter were futilely trying to mediate by suggesting a House-wide research project to settle the matter once and the last quarter were of the very firm (and loud) opinion that they couldn’t start another House-wide research project when they weren’t done with the last one. Students from other tables were starting to give them funny glances, but that was nothing new. Severus wondered if he would ever be able to eat a meal in peace again. Sure, nobody had talked to him in Slytherin, but <em>nobody had talked to him in Slytherin</em>. He was missing it already.</p><p> </p><p>There was a commotion across the Great Hall and Severus looked up, impressed that another table had beaten the Ravenclaws to a full-fledged shouting match. He watched until the idiot perpetrators (and Lily?) were marched off for their punishment covered in various foodstuffs and wondered if they’d be out in time for Charms. They were still working on the basics in that class, but Severus sat next to Lily and he didn’t want to face Flitwick alone, especially since McGonagall had apparently told the other teachers that he was some sort of magical prodigy.</p><p> </p><p>Severus took exception to this for a number of reasons.</p><p> </p><p>First of all, it really wasn’t true. In the dream, he’d gotten high marks, but he had been good at subjects because he’d worked at them, not because he had some innate instinct for them. He’d liked Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, so he’d taught himself—Slughorn and the rotating cast of DADA teachers had been uniformly useless. It was natural he’d know a lot about those subjects now. But the only reason he was any good at Transfiguration was because he’d had years of practice as a full-grown wizard.</p><p> </p><p>He lost his house key? Transfigure a new one.</p><p> </p><p>Need new shoelaces? Transfigure some.</p><p> </p><p>The radiator fell off the wall? Transfigure a sock into duct tape and spend the next year pretending not to see it until the transfiguration wears off, then rinse and repeat. Problem solved.</p><p> </p><p>Really, Transfiguration was an all-purpose magic. But there were limits to Severus’ working knowledge about it and he expected that McGonagall would be very disappointed with his sudden and terminal averageness if she ever managed to bully him into the upper-level classes.</p><p> </p><p>The same went for Charms. Yes, Severus had been able to cast a few high-level charms like the Patronus, so he knew some theory, but there was a big difference between knowing how to do something and being able to do it. Severus didn’t know if he even had a happy enough memory to make a Patronus right now, especially since the dream-memories were so uniformly miserable. And for the little charms and small magics that he’d barely touched ever since graduating Hogwarts the first time—he hardly remembered how to do them at all.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had been dying a little on the inside working in front of the professors who had taken McGonagall’s reports at face value. Flitwick kept trying to engage with him on a theoretical level more appropriate for a fourth-year, Ahlgrim the astronomy teacher kept looking right at him expectantly any time he asked the class a question, and Vespan the flying instructor had tried to volunteer him to demonstrate a maneuver on a broom that Severus had barely avoided by claiming to get motion sick.</p><p> </p><p>Only Sprout had drawn her own conclusions about his supposed genius, and that was because when she had asked them the benefits of growing one’s own potions ingredients Severus had answered without thinking in front of the whole class that there were absolutely none. He hadn’t realized he was wounding her professional pride until he had already laid out a laundry list of all the reasons why, but by then her mouth had been set in a thin wobbling line and she’d let the class out early for what Severus was sure were entirely unrelated reasons. Not even a month into the school year and he already had the dubious distinction of making a professor cry. At least she didn’t call on him anymore.</p><p> </p><p>In his defense, a lot of Potions masters liked to advertise that they grew and/or collected all their own ingredients, but dream-Severus had concluded that that was the height of bullshittery. As far as he could tell (backed by extensive research when he’d been bored out of his mind in the summers), there was no real difference between a potion made from <em>simply the finest ingredients my boy</em> and one made from whatever Severus found in the back of his cupboard from twelve years ago. Sure, the color would be different and the expensive one would probably taste better, but their effects would usually be about the same.</p><p> </p><p>Anyway, dealing with the teachers was annoying, but it could be so much worse. Besides, Severus had come to a startling epiphany regarding his schoolwork. On one hand, maybe working really really hard and studying all the time meant he could get recruited by the Dark Lord and save Lily. On the other hand—consider this—if he <em>didn’t</em> work really hard in every one of his classes and study obsessively, he could probably still find a way to save Lily <em>and</em> he could sleep in on the weekends.</p><p> </p><p>Nobody made it into Slytherin by embracing altruism. Severus might not be a Slytherin anymore, but he had never been one to break the mold.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>The quarter of his Housemates who were advocating the House-wide research project appeared to have gained the upper hand. Severus stealthily left his seat before someone could assign him a topic and headed to Potions with Slughorn and the Hufflepuffs. With any luck, someone would explode something today so Slughorn wouldn’t be able to talk to him about the stupidly long essay he’d turned in and try to get him to join his talent group again. (Severus didn’t know what he’d been trying to accomplish when he baited Slughorn like that. Maybe his daddy issues were acting up again.)</p><p> </p><p>Severus slung his bag over his shoulder and made for the dungeons through the empty halls. Breakfast was still in full swing so he thought he’d find an empty alcove and start on a book he’d found on magical medicinal plants of the Andes. Maybe when he went home, he’d get some sticky notes so he could annotate pages without fearing for his life from Madam Pince. He might not care for Muggles all that much (what had they ever done for him?), but even he had to admit their office supplies were far superior. He’d take a pen over a quill any day.</p><p> </p><p>He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Sirius Black waiting for him slouched against the wall. At least, he didn’t notice until Black spoke.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Death Eater</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus froze. His hand tightened on the strap of his bag. The other twitched for his wand. He turned so his hips and shoulders were both facing Black. <em>Dueling stance</em>, he recognized absently, but at that moment he couldn’t quite care. “Excuse me?”</p><p> </p><p>Black looked like he almost smirked before he peeled himself off the wall and walked away, leaving Severus to stare at his back for a second before he kicked his legs into motion and ran after him. “I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t quite catch what you said. Could you repeat yourself?”</p><p> </p><p>Black scoffed, neither slowing down nor looking at Severus. “Merlin, you sound like you ate a dictionary for breakfast. No wonder nobody ever liked you.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus sputtered. “What?”</p><p> </p><p>“No one talks like that. We’re <em>eleven</em>. How does anyone hold a conversation with you without tearing their own ears off?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus had heard enough, and with a terrible feeling in his stomach that told him he’d already figured out the answer but wanted to be wrong, he slammed open the door of one of the unused classrooms they were passing and hauled Black inside with a hand fisted in the sleeve of his (unfairly nice) robes.</p><p> </p><p>Before Black could do more than stumble, Severus had let go of his robe and stepped back, making sure the door was shut. “What do you know?”</p><p> </p><p>Black sputtered. “What do you mean, what do <em>I</em> know? What do <em>you</em> know?” He had his wand out, Severus noticed, but he was holding it loosely and pointed down. That was all right. Severus was still holding his too.</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook his head and paced a few steps. “This isn’t going to work. What do you—all right, wait. If Pettigrew had an illegal Animagus form, what would it be?”</p><p> </p><p>Black’s eyes narrowed. “A rat. And I would be a big black dog and James would be a stag, and you would still be a greasy git.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus smiled at Black and made sure to show a lot of teeth. “My knowledge of curses is extensive and under-utilized, Black. Don’t try me.”</p><p> </p><p>They stared each other down for a few minutes. Or at least, they tried to, but Severus had shuffled some dust up when he’d paced and he could only hold in his sneeze for so long.</p><p> </p><p>One sneeze turned into two turned into seven, and when he was finally done, rubbing his watery eyes, Black was staring at him with a dumbfounded look on his face.</p><p> </p><p>“Never seen anyone sneeze before, Black?” Severus sneered, which would have been more impressive if he had sounded a little less congested.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re not really him, are you?” Black said suddenly. Severus opened his mouth to answer, but Black shook his head. “No, I mean—you’re Snape, but you’re not the one <em>I</em> knew, are you?”</p><p> </p><p>It was Severus’ turn to stare. “I don’t—listen, I had a dream one night, and now I know things I didn’t used to know. A lot of things. But I’m still who I was before I went to sleep. Who are <em>you</em>?”</p><p><br/>
Black sat down hard on the floor like he was a marionette that had had its strings cut. “You’re—I don’t know. I fell through the Veil, and then I woke up. I don’t know what’s happening.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s nothing new,” Severus said, ignoring Black’s affronted look. He felt awkward looming over Black on the floor, so he sat down on a cleaner patch of floor an arms’ length away and tried to think of something else to say.</p><p> </p><p>“What I meant,” Black said, finally breaking the silence, “is you’re not the Snape I hated. And I guess—anything that happened between me and him never really happened between you and me, right? You—you’re still a child, if you’re not lying. So, what I’m saying is—truce?” He held out a hand that had dust caked into its lifelines, and Severus hesitated, but—</p><p> </p><p>“All right. Truce.” He wiped his hand on his robe after they shook and Black pretended not to see. “Is that why you haven’t killed Pettigrew in his sleep yet?”</p><p> </p><p>Black cracked his knuckles. “I’ve thought about it. But he’s just so pathetic. He’s a child. I can’t. And Remus won’t let me bully him. But I’m keeping an eye on him, trust me. If he steps out of line even an inch…”</p><p> </p><p>“So magnanimous of you,” Severus muttered. “Right. So, you should know—I was always a spy for Dumbledore. For real.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s what a spy would say. How do I know you’re not lying?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged. “Trust what you know about my good nature.”</p><p> </p><p>Black laughed uproariously and Severus scowled.</p><p> </p><p>“Fine, your turn. What happened before you fell through the Veil?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus rolled his eyes. “We need to see if our accounts match up.”</p><p> </p><p>It was Black’s turn to scowl, but he began to speak. Severus sat and listened with a sense of growing déjà vu, interrupting whenever it seemed pertinent.</p><p> </p><p>“—You forgot the time you tried to feed me to a werewolf. How is Lupin, by the way? He was looking quite annoyed at breakfast.—Remind me what you did after Hogwarts? Prison, right? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my gainful employment.—Why didn’t you ask for a trial under Veritaserum? It’s like you <em>wanted</em> to go to Azkaban.—Come on now, you say that like I didn’t have <em>a lot of very valid reasons to hate you</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Black finally lost his temper. “I thought we had a <em>truce</em>? And I didn’t do any of those things to <em>you</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Notice I haven’t hexed you yet. <em>That’s</em> the truce. Besides, dream-me and me-me feel the same. It’s too confusing to pretend they’re different.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fine, whatever. Can you shut up for five minutes so we can get to class on time?”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s supposed to be my line,” Severus said, but kept mum as Black finished. Voldemort returning, blah blah blah, hippogriff rescue, blah blah blah, the Department of Mysteries…and falling through the Veil.</p><p> </p><p>“Why do they even keep that around?” Severus muttered, and shook his head. “Right, so to sum up, we both remember dying—”</p><p> </p><p>“You died?”</p><p> </p><p>“Of course I died, did you think I just decided to show up here? At least, I’m assuming I died. The memories stop.”</p><p> </p><p>“How’d it happen?” Black asked, looking both very curious and a little queasy. “What happened after I fell through the Veil?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nagini.” Severus ignored Black’s <em>other</em> question and stony glare. “<em>Anyway</em>, so we both died after being complete fuckups our whole lives. And apparently the universe believes in second chances.” He was quiet for a moment. “How do we fix this?”</p><p> </p><p>Black scowled. “What is there to fix? James and Evans are alive, I know not to trust Peter, and Bellatrix hasn’t gone crazy and killed me yet. I think we’re doing pretty good.”</p><p> </p><p>“You <em>would</em> think that. Right, well—oh, we’re going to be late. We need to talk about this more. Let’s meet here during lunch.” Severus shot to his feet and dusted off his robes.</p><p> </p><p>“How late could we be—oh <em>no</em>, McGonagall’s going to kill me, this is the third time this week. I refuse to meet in this room again. If I hear you sneeze one more time I’ll hex your mouth shut and watch you sneeze yourself to death and I won’t even feel bad about it.” Black opened the door into a corridor that was still empty, but this time for all the wrong reasons.</p><p> </p><p>“What happened to our truce?” Severus snapped, keeping pace with Back’s long unhurried strides that somehow managed to be as fast as Severus at a half-trot. (It must be a pureblood thing. Lucius had been able to do it too.)</p><p> </p><p>“It would be a mercy kill, that doesn’t count.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fine, then the library. Or join me at the Ravenclaw table, no one will be able to hear us over whatever ridiculous thing they decide to debate this time. They keep bringing up <em>goblin rights</em> and I don’t know how to tell them that goblins probably have more rights than we do. They don’t seem to realize that goblins <em>essentially run our economy</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Good job, you’re talking like a real person now,” Black said, a little smugly. “Why weren’t you in the first place?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged and scowled and pretended he didn’t feel his face grow warm. “Well, Ravenclaws are supposed to be smart. So I figured…”</p><p> </p><p>"Yeah, you overdid it. You sounded like the portrait of my great-great-grandfather Phineas whenever he’s had too much to drink. Snooty and pretentious, and like ninety years old.”</p><p> </p><p>“If he’s a portrait, then how…?”</p><p> </p><p>“Magic.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus scowled harder. “No, <em>really</em>?” The castle had apparently shifted in an attempt to make them even later than they would have been, which didn’t help his mood. They went down a flight of stairs that hadn’t been there earlier and jumped over a few steps that looked suspiciously intangible. “By the way, how did you know I’d had the dream too?”</p><p> </p><p>“What? I didn’t. How could I have known that?”</p><p> </p><p>“You called me a Death Eater. If I hadn’t had the dream, I wouldn’t have known what that was. What, were you just trying to confirm if it was all real or something?”</p><p> </p><p>Black was silent but the look on his face said it all.</p><p> </p><p>Severus sighed heavily. “Blind luck really is a skill. You would’ve been better off asking Remus if he’s a werewolf, you know. At least that’s a preexisting condition.”</p><p> </p><p>Black gave him the finger.</p><p> </p><p>He went up a different flight of stairs to Transfiguration and Severus finally found the corridor that led to Potions. He slunk into his seat just as Slughorn clapped his hands to get their attention and a piece of floating chalk wrote step-by-step instructions on the board as he spoke. Severus very determinedly did not make eye contact and focused on his Melliferens potion, which was supposed to help flowers bloom ahead of season. Regrettably, none of the Hufflepuffs was considerate enough to cause an explosion of any considerable size (although one did have to go for a bit of a lie-down after she added her hazelnut shells too early and huffed the fumes), and Severus wasn’t light enough on his feet to avoid Slughorn, who appeared at his elbow and requested that <em>he stay after class for just a moment dear boy</em>.</p><p> </p><p>The last of the Hufflepuffs trickled out and Slughorn didn’t waste any time on niceties. “My boy, it seems I have done you a disservice. The essay you turned in to me was not padded for length like those of so many of your classmates but was in fact a detailed treatise on the intricacies of potion-making, with some details that even I had not previously considered. It demonstrated to me that you are a thoughtful student with an impressively intuitive understanding of my craft. I have a small group—we meet on Tuesday nights and occasionally have larger events—full of individuals that I have hand-picked for the potential that I see in them. I would like to extend an invitation to you as well.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shifted on his feet and widened his eyes in a passable imitation of a real first-year. “Thank you for your consideration, Professor Slughorn”—he abruptly remembered Black’s jibe about talking like his grandfather—“But sorry, I don’t know if I want to join any clubs yet, I’m still getting used to classes...”</p><p> </p><p>Slughorn interrupted him. “Dear boy, don’t fret. The meetings are quite short, you see, and there are many other brilliant students, any of whom I’m sure would be delighted to help you with any troubles you might face.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m really not sure—”</p><p> </p><p>“You’ll be exposed to the cream of the crop of purebloods, half-bloods, and Muggleborns alike.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t care about that, I’d rather do potions—”</p><p> </p><p>“If you joined, I could arrange extra time for you to experiment. Supervised, of course.”</p><p> </p><p>“You would supervise?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m afraid I’m rather too busy, my boy, but I could arrange—oh, I could arrange a prefect…”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t know any of the prefects except Lucius,” Severus said, making his voice sound small. He recognized an opportunity to bother Lucius when he heard it. “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone—”</p><p> </p><p>“Young Mr. Malfoy, of course! He’s quite talented at Potions himself, did you know? He’s another member of my club, in fact. And he owes me quite the favor since I stuck out my neck for him when he failed Ancient Runes the second time—but I shouldn’t blather on like this or you’ll get the wrong impression of him. He’s a very intelligent young man, you see, and you certainly wouldn’t be inconveniencing him. It would be good for him to make your acquaintance—I’m sure the two of you will get along splendidly.”</p><p> </p><p>Slughorn ushered Severus to the door before he could get a word in edgewise, still talking. “How about the two of you meet in this room for, say, an hour after dinner on Wednesdays and Thursdays starting next week? I’m quite sure he’ll be free then—never fear, I’ll be the one to tell him about it. Purebloods can be terribly prickly about their social commitments, I’m sure you know. Now don’t forget, the club meets on Tuesdays at six in the classroom next to my office…I’m so pleased you’ll be there. Now have a good day, and if you see Miranda Hoff—fourth-year, Hufflepuff, rather stringy-looking brown hair—would you please tell her that I found her love letter to Eustace Manderly and to come get it from my office? Unfortunately, it appears to have been rejected—it was rather crumpled—but perhaps she’ll want it to look back on one day and long for the exuberance of youth. Cheerio, dear boy.”</p><p> </p><p>He shut the door in Severus’ face and Severus walked on in a bit of a daze. He felt a bit sorry for that Miranda person—his dream-self didn’t know her, so maybe she’d moved schools in shame—and he also wished he could see Lucius’ face when he learned he had to spend two hours a week with Severus for the foreseeable future. Lucius would probably throw the granddaddy of all fits.</p><p> </p><p><em>Gotcha</em>, Severus thought, barely able to keep himself from rubbing his hands together with glee. <em>My devious plan is already coming to fruition…Lucius, you will meet your doom at my hands…</em></p><p> </p><p>Surely Black couldn’t criticize him if he kept the pretentious language for his inner monologue. It wouldn’t do to get out of practice.</p><p> </p><p>Lily and the rest of the food fighters were in Charms and Severus tried to make quiet conversation whenever Flitwick got too engrossed in the history of the Cheering Charm. “—invented by Felix Summerbee in the early 1400s—”</p><p> </p><p>“Did you get detention? They shuffled you out of there awfully fast this morning.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily grunted.</p><p> </p><p>“—ironically, although developed to combat the symptoms of depression, it is impossible to cast it on yourself—"</p><p> </p><p>“You have egg in your hair. No, more to the left, up a little—there, you got it all.”</p><p> </p><p>“—perhaps a metaphor for how we need to learn to rely on those around us—”</p><p> </p><p>Flitwick eventually demonstrated the Cheering Charm and encouraged them to try it on each other. Severus pulled his wand and tried to get the motions right—this wasn’t exactly a charm he’d used a lot in the dream.</p><p> </p><p>“I talked with Black after breakfast—”</p><p> </p><p>Lily’s eyes sparked and she finally responded. “That <em>toerag</em>,” she hissed. “He got away scot-free! And when I tried to tell them, Potter lied and said he was in the bathroom the whole time! What a—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus got the charm on his third try and Lily’s tirade swung into shrieks of whooping laughter, remarkably like a fire alarm going off at three am. The whole class turned and looked at them in unison. Potter dramatically slapped his hands over his ears and pulled a face and Severus was glad Lily had her back to him. There was nothing like a little attempted murder to spice up a class.</p><p> </p><p>“A little too heavy-handed, Mr. Snape,” Flitwick said, materializing at his elbow, “but a very good effort nevertheless. <em>Finite</em>. Now, Ms. Evans, you try it.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus found himself looking down the business end of Lily’s wand and before he could think oh no, she hit him with the charm and he dissolved into a puddle of tears on the floor.</p><p> </p><p>Metaphorically, of course—this wasn’t Transfiguration class.</p><p> </p><p>Although Severus was a little preoccupied (namely in that he was in the fetal position sobbing his eyes out for no reason and <em>he couldn’t stop</em>), he could still hear the overwhelming joy in Flitwick’s voice and in the way that his little feet were tip-tapping in unrestrained glee.</p><p> </p><p>“Ms. Evans, did you do that on purpose? Can you tell me why?”</p><p> </p><p>“But Sev—”</p><p> </p><p>“Never mind him, he’ll be fine. Now would you please explain what you did?”</p><p> </p><p>“I just—I didn’t want to do the charm too strong, so I did the motion backwards—”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Excellent thinking</em>, Ms. Evans! Your logic was impeccable. Simply by performing the motion backwards, you can significantly weaken the strength of any charm. However, you also, perhaps instinctively, performed the incantation backwards, which together with the reversed motion, causes a charm with the exact opposite effect—in this case, evidently an intense feeling of despair. This is why Mr. Snape has been crying on the floor—oh dear, terribly sorry about that, Mr. Snape. <em>Finite</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus blinked the tears out of his eyes and stayed on the ground—it was less humiliating down there.</p><p> </p><p>“Would someone please take him to the infirmary? Not you, Ms. Evans, I still want to talk to you—oh, Mr. Black, thank you for volunteering! Please return to class when you’re done, I didn’t see you perform your own charm successfully…”</p><p> </p><p>“Come on,” Black grunted somewhere above Severus’ head, hauling him upright by the back of his robes and out the door of the classroom.</p><p> </p><p>Severus tried very hard to say something biting but couldn’t quite manage it over the lump in his throat, the ache in his stomach, and the tears that were still sneaking from his eyes, no matter how hard he squeezed them shut. Black had to lead him through the corridors and warn him whenever there was a gap in the staircases or a flagstone in the floor that had an edge sticking up. Finally, they made it to Madam Pomfrey, who tutted at Black’s account of the incident and put Severus to bed with the cloying taste of an emotion-stabilizing potion still on his tongue.</p><p> </p><p>Severus expected Black to go after Pomfrey had pulled the pale cotton curtains around the bed (really, he wasn’t sure why Black had volunteered to escort him in the first place), but a minute later Black snuck between them and sat gingerly on the hard-backed chair usually reserved for hysterical relatives.</p><p> </p><p>“You never did tell me what happened after I fell. Got a moment?”</p><p> </p><p>Ah, there it was.</p><p> </p><p>Severus blinked his swollen eyes at the ceiling and sniffled back the last of the tears. The charm had been ended and he’d cried himself out, and now he wanted to curl up and sleep until the horrible white glare of the fake-electric infirmary lights didn’t fry his frontal lobe. But Black had crossed his arms over his skinny chest and looked like he’d stay until Severus cracked, so Severus decided to save them both some trouble and crack gracefully and immediately.</p><p> </p><p>He kept his voice low—the curtains were spelled so he couldn’t hear anything beyond them, but he didn’t know if it worked both ways.</p><p> </p><p>“So, I killed Dumbledore. Sit down, you idiot. He asked me to. But there was a—anyway. Voldemort had the Malfoys by the short hairs and decided to make Lucius’ kid—”</p><p> </p><p>“Draco?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, him—he made Draco responsible for getting him Hogwarts, for some re<br/>
ason—anyway. The kid got the Vanishing Cabinet part done all right, but he choked at killing Dumbledore, and anyway I’d made an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa that I’d help him out—”</p><p> </p><p>“Rather out of character for you.”</p><p> </p><p>“She asked <em>me</em>, Black. But the thing was, Dumbledore was already dying. Did you ever hear of a Horcrux?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah. Sounds spiffy.”</p><p> </p><p>“Basically, Voldemort split his soul into pieces and put them into objects for…safekeeping? Functional immortality? Erections that never flag? I was never quite sure. Dumbledore found one of them and he got a nasty curse from it, so he asked me to kill him to prove my loyalty to Voldemort. Potter’s son—”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Harry</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, him—he had to hunt down the Horcruxes and destroy them, because obviously there was no one better for the job than a seventeen-year-old boy—I got him the Sword of Gryffindor, by the way, <em>at great peril to myself</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>“How—how was Harry? After I—fell?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus thumped his head back on the pillow. “Incredibly moody, exhibited self-destructive tendencies, pushed away all his friends—all five stages of grief with an extra-long stop at anger. He hated me more than usual too. Thought I’d sabotaged you. Which I didn’t, by the way.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” Black said. His voice was very small. Severus hated it. Black’s grief was none of his business.</p><p> </p><p>“Listen, as much as I’d love a heart-to-heart, my head’s killing me. Can we wrap this up?”</p><p> </p><p>Black tried to subtly clear his throat. (Severus graciously did not comment.) “Has anyone told you you’re rubbish at stories?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, excuse me, let me just go write a <em>seven-part series</em> on it—I hope you get dragon pox. Stop smirking. Right, so there I was at the battle for Hogwarts—there was a battle for Hogwarts, by the way—doing spy things and waiting for the perfect moment to double-cross Voldemort—”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, I <em>bet</em> you were—”</p><p> </p><p>“—but he got the drop on me first. Since I killed Dumbledore, he thought I had ownership of the Elder Wand, so he had Nagini bite me and left me to die—which is very inadvisable in any context; for all he knew I could have been <em>faking</em>—truthfully, I was embarrassed for him as a fellow Slytherin—and your godson was conveniently there, so I spilled a mind-full of memories to him and kicked it.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s…it?”</p><p> </p><p>“What were you expecting? Some public heroic sacrifice? What I gave him should have been enough to defeat Voldemort. And the thanks I get for that is to go through puberty again, apparently.”</p><p> </p><p>“You couldn’t have found a way to <em>let him know how to defeat Voldemort</em> before the <em>very last moment</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>“I was maximizing the drama, Black. You can only double-cross someone once. Besides, your godson wouldn’t have trusted me—<em>I killed Dumbledore</em>. He trusted me when I was dying because he knew I had nothing to gain.” Severus rolled onto his stomach and pulled the sheet over his head. “That’s all I know,” he said, voice muffled. “Let me sleep.”</p><p> </p><p>He waited until he heard Black push through the curtains before he breathed out slowly and the knot in his stomach loosened just a little.</p><p> </p><p>That wasn’t all he knew.</p><p> </p><p>But what good could come out of telling Black that Severus had sent his godson marching to his death like a good little soldier?</p><p> </p><p>Some things were better left unspoken.</p><p> </p><p>Severus tried to ignore the bitter taste in his mouth and went to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Black kept to himself for the whole of the weekend, but Monday at lunch he slid into the seat next to Severus. The rest of his Housemates were too busy carrying on that morning’s debate to notice the new first-year at their table.</p><p> </p><p>“You weren’t kidding that they like to argue,” Black observed, wrinkling his nose. “What are they even talking about?”</p><p> </p><p>“Ley lines.”</p><p> </p><p>“But…those don’t exist? Although I always did sleep through a lot of History of Magic…”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s what they’re arguing about. One of the Clearwaters asked at breakfast whether we could tap into them for energy like Muggles use the force of water from rivers to create electricity, but the table decided that we have to figure out whether they’re real first or not. It’s really an interesting topic—”</p><p> </p><p>“Please, don’t tell me more. You said this would be a good time to talk.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus nibbled on a slice of apple and sighed. “Fine. I’ll get a transcript after lunch.” He nodded at the girl a few seats down whose face was mostly obscured by the flurry of quills darting between sheets of paper.</p><p> </p><p>“You guys are nutters, you know that?”</p><p> </p><p>“I am well aware, Black. What do you want?”</p><p> </p><p>Black snagged a ham sandwich off the platter in front of them. “Well, what do you know about what Voldemort’s doing now?” he said with his mouth full.</p><p> </p><p>“Not much. He spent a lot of time on the Continent before he really tried to take over Britain, but all I know is that he was building up his power base and finding sympathizers. He came back to England the year we graduated.” Severus stabbed at the meat on his plate with a vengeance. “I can’t tell you anything more specific than that.”</p><p> </p><p>“What was the point of getting sympathizers on the Continent?”</p><p> </p><p>“His goal was the world, Black. Britain was just supposed to be his first little bite out of it.”</p><p> </p><p>Black scowled and leaned back, swinging his legs under the table. “Can we assume he’ll do the same thing again? That would give us another six years to figure this out.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus gnawed on the tines of his fork. “Who knows? Maybe.”</p><p> </p><p>“Maybe, huh. So we really don’t know anything.”</p><p> </p><p>“Nope.”</p><p> </p><p>“Great.”</p><p> </p><p>One of Severus’ older Housemates finally seemed to notice that Sirius was wearing the wrong-colored tie. “Hey, what are you doing here? This is the Ravenclaw table.”</p><p> </p><p>“We’re trying to figure out whether changing one part of a timeline changes the rest of the timeline, or whether you can change a single part and the rest will stay the same down the line,” Severus said.</p><p> </p><p>“What, you mean like alternate dimensions?”</p><p> </p><p>“Or time-travel,” another proximal upper year interjected. “Wouldn’t it all have to change? That’s the whole premise of the butterfly effect, that small changes make other small changes that make other small changes until everything’s been changed.”</p><p> </p><p>The first Ravenclaw scowled. “In a purely random system, sure, but think about magical consistencies, the points of the universe that have been <em>determined</em> to happen—like prophecies!”</p><p> </p><p>“Would you <em>shut up</em> about prophecies? They go unfulfilled all the time, they’re worthless!”</p><p> </p><p>“They’re not unfulfilled, they just haven’t been fulfilled <em>yet</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>Black leaned over and whispered to Severus. “As fun as this is…” He slipped off the bench and disappeared in the direction of the Gryffindor table.</p><p> </p><p>The two Ravenclaws kept arguing about determinism and causality until one of the seventh-years shouted at them that only one topic of debate was allowed at the table at a time so they didn’t mess up the transcripts and that if they wanted to argue whether prophecies were avoidable again they needed to put it on the topic list in the Common Room like everybody else. Severus avoided eye contact and left shortly after.</p><p> </p><p>The next day was Tuesday. Although Severus didn’t have high hopes for Slughorn’s social group, it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. He’d never been one for small talk or meeting new people, but he’d barely had to say a word all evening. Slughorn had taken care of most of that by pulling him around and introducing him to older students whose names and faces he vaguely knew. To his surprise, those whom he recognized from his time as a Death Eater were from all four Houses, not just Slytherin. Either blood purists came from all backgrounds or whoever ran Voldemort’s recruiting campaign had been incredible.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius had had it out for him in the teeth-gratingly polite way purebloods favored—“Ah, I’m positively <em>amazed</em> you know as much about potions as you do, considering your…situation”—but overall it appeared that he had, however reluctantly, accepted that he’d be stuck with Severus. Severus had respected that by only bringing it up into their conversation twice just to see him twitch.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Despite himself, he was excited for the chance to make potions independently and nag Lucius into the Light. Two birds with one stone, and all that.</p><p> </p><p>On Wednesday, he arrived at the classroom promptly after dinner, only to wait in the corridor for ten minutes before Lucius appeared, dead-eyed and monotone, to unlock the door and gesture him inside.</p><p> </p><p>All Severus’ attempts at conversation were thrown back or outright ignored, until finally, a little fed up, he decided to see if Lucius was really paying attention. He added three moth wings, powered elm bark, and a drop of giant spit to two units of Potion Base 4, then waited for it to start bubbling ominously. He held a shard of rose quartz above the cauldron—and Lucius grabbed his wrist hard enough to bruise.</p><p> </p><p>“That will make it explode,” Lucius said, cold with an emotion between rage and disdain. Not yelling, because purebloods didn’t yell, but punctuating his words with enough emphasis that it felt a little like he was spitting frozen nails at Severus’ forehead.</p><p> </p><p>“No, it won’t,” Severus said. “Rose quartz is a stabilizer—”</p><p> </p><p>“Not when paired with Base 4, you little idiot. I thought you were supposed to be good at this?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus considered this. “Yes, I am.” He opened his clenched fist and dropped the rose quartz into the cauldron.</p><p> </p><p>Three things happened in quick succession. Lucius tackled Severus to the ground, Severus hit his head on the stone floor hard enough he saw stars, and the potion did not explode.</p><p> </p><p>“Wowee,” Severus said, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. “What an explosion.”</p><p> </p><p>When Lucius turned to look at him, the expression on his face would have cowed Severus (even just a little) if he hadn’t been feeling a bit more floaty than normal. “What did you <em>do</em>?” Lucius hissed.</p><p> </p><p>Severus giggled. (He would deny it later.) “Rose quartz and Base 4 explode, but moth wings counter quartz and elm bark counters the base. And giant spit makes it bubble. I am very good at this.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius made a noise of pure frustration and snarled. “<em>You</em>—” He stopped himself. “Get up,” he ordered. “We’re going to talk about this.”</p><p> </p><p>“All right,” Severus said, feeling charitable, and tried to get to his feet. Tried was the operative word, because as soon as he sat up a little Lucius made a different noise and grabbed his shoulder to keep him in place.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re bleeding!”</p><p> </p><p>“Am not.”</p><p> </p><p>“The puddle where your head was says you are!” Lucius gagged a little. He always did hate blood.</p><p> </p><p>“Just a scratch,” Severus said, although now that Lucius mentioned it, he did feel something hot dripping down his scalp. “You should turn the heat down now or else it might actually explode—”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius, panicking, lunged for the cauldron and pushed it off the flames onto the granite work surface and fumbled with his wand for a minute before the fire snuffed itself.</p><p> </p><p>“Come on,” he ordered, hauling Severus to his feet and holding him there with a hand around his upper arm. He glanced at the back of Severus’ head and went dead white, then swallowed hard and pulled Severus forward.</p><p> </p><p>“On the bright side,” Severus said as Lucius led him out of the room, “maybe Slughorn will think you’re so bad at this that he assigns me another prefect.”</p><p> </p><p>“Neither of us is dead or maimed,” Lucius said, morose. “Even if we were, he probably wouldn’t mind as long as we were still able to make it to his little club.”</p><p> </p><p>“If you hate it, why’d you join?” Severus stumbled over a canted flagstone. Really, the Founders could create a giant, semi-sentient castle, but they couldn’t bother putting in level floors? Wizarding priorities at their finest.</p><p> </p><p>If possible, Lucius sounded even more glum. “He’s friends with my father, and my father wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m going to be going to that garish room, eating those horrible fattening pastries, and making inane chit-chat with people I can’t be bothered to care about until the day I die.”<br/>
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</p><p>Severus wasn’t sure what to respond to that so he kept quiet, and after a moment Lucius spoke again. “Why did you say the potion was going to explode? You said you neutralized it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, only temporarily. Once the heat destroys the moth wings and the elm bark, there’s nothing left to kill the quartz and the base. But the explosion would have been smaller. And the giant spit would have made it frothy.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius shuddered. He always did hate spit.</p><p> </p><p>They finally made it to Madam Pomfrey’s office. She scolded Lucius mightily for negligence until he, puffed up with hurt, told her what had actually happened, and then she turned her gimlet eye to Severus, who may or may not have played up the severity of his head injury to win her sympathy and duck her righteous ire.</p><p> </p><p>After she had mended Severus, put him to bed for “observation”, told Lucius in no uncertain terms that they could resume their sessions next week, and left the room, Lucius sat on the chair to the side and scowled. “I know you’re not that hurt. You were talking in full sentences on the way up here.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus cracked an eye and a tiny smile. “Can you blame me?”</p><p> </p><p>“Ugh.” Lucius leaned his head back against the wall and breathed out. “Listen. You can’t do that again. I don’t care if you know more about potions than I do, which means I shouldn’t be supervising in the first place—if you get hurt, I’m going to be the one who gets in trouble.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah,” Severus said, and felt a tiny bit bad. “Sorry.”</p><p> </p><p>“Just—would you keep from blowing yourself up, or me from thinking that you’re going to blow yourself up? I’m losing hours of my life to you, that’s the least you can do for me.”</p><p> </p><p>“All right,” Severus said. “But only because you saved me.”</p><p> </p><p>“I saved myself,” Lucius retorted. “You just happened to be in the way.”</p><p> </p><p>“Really?” Severus smiled. “Well, I forgive you for tackling me. What’s a little head injury between <em>family</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius’ full-body twitch was incredibly gratifying to see.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Friday at Potions, Severus pointedly refused to look down at the reddish stain on the floor (that evidently <em>no one</em> had bothered to clean up) when some Hufflepuff gasped “Is that <em>blood</em>?” Mass generalized hysteria ensued.</p><p> </p><p>Resulting casualties:</p><p> </p><p>One Hufflepuff threw up.</p><p> </p><p>Two Hufflepuffs swooned and had to put their head down between their knees.</p><p> </p><p>Approximately seven Ravenclaws got shouted at by Slughorn when they ignored the lesson plan and tried to figure out a spell to identify whose blood it was while simultaneously arguing about the possibility of magical blood-borne diseases.</p><p> </p><p>Severus diced murtlap to a soundtrack of chaos and felt a little embarrassed.</p><p> </p><p>Well. Maybe the puddle had been just a little bigger than he’d realized.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Severus hid behind a suit of armor and tried to think positive thoughts. For example: Lily was great at Charms. That was something that should be encouraged, especially since it took Flitwick’s attention off Severus in favor of his new favorite. And it was even better that she’d started creating her own charm prototypes with a vengeance. That showed creativity. Only a good thing, right?</p><p><br/>
</p><p>What was less of a good thing was that Potter had taken it as some sort of challenge. Every time Lily had created a charm that did something, he had recreated it—but better. Just slightly better, which Severus thought wasn’t too awful since he was just improving on Lily’s original design in some small way, but it drove Lily up the wall. Finally, after several weeks of this, Lily had in cold fury abandoned practical charms and moved onto creating hexes and jinxes just for a special someone. Potter had followed suit. Thus commenced a war of attrition.</p><p> </p><p>They threw jinxes in passing in the hallways and hexes at each other’s turned backs in the classrooms when the teachers weren’t looking. Lily created a jinx that yanked Potter’s glasses upwards off his face and stuck them to the ceiling. Potter developed one that made Lily whistle like a tea kettle (the madder she got, the shriller she got.) Lily had stayed up all night after that until she had a hex that made Potter only able to speak in barnyard animal noises. (Potter’s friends had thought it was so funny that none of them would cast a <em>Finite</em> on him for two days. He’d gotten detention from four different teachers who hadn’t realized he’d been hexed.) Once he could talk again, he retaliated with a spell that turned the whites of her eyes as black as pitch. And on, and on, and on.</p><p> </p><p>“Budge over, will you?” someone hissed behind him, and Severus scooted over far enough that Black could take shelter with him in the alcove behind the suit of armor. His face was caked with a chalky white substance. Interesting. That was one of Potter’s specialties.</p><p> </p><p>“Friendly fire?” Severus asked.</p><p> </p><p>“That moron can’t <em>aim</em>!” Black rubbed his sleeve over his face and scowled ferociously. “I don’t know what this stuff is supposed to be, but it just won’t come off!”</p><p> </p><p>One of the castle ghosts passing through the corridor as though there weren’t a pitched magical battle happening at that very moment caught sight of them and phased through the suit of armor toward them with a thunderous expression on his face. “Do you think that’s funny, young man?” he demanded. “Wearing ghost face like that? Disrespecting the dead? I have half a mind to have a word with your head of house—”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not what it looks like,” Sirius protested. “Besides, I wouldn’t—”</p><p> </p><p>“Obviously you <em>would</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>“I have <em>nothing</em> against ghosts. We have a few in my family home—”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, do you want me to believe some of your best friends are ghosts? I’ve heard <em>that</em> before. Disgraceful.”</p><p> </p><p>Black paused and nodded slowly. “You’re right, they’re not my friends,” he said, sweet as absinthe. “You know why? Because nobody wants to be friends with miserable old dead things like you.”<br/>
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</p><p>The ghost gasped. “That’s it! I’m going straight to McGonagall!”</p><p> </p><p>Severus jammed his elbow into Black’s ribs. “I think that’s a marvelous idea, sir,” he said, trying for a polite smile. (Black’s facial expression suggested he hadn’t been all that successful.) “You go right to McGonagall and tell her how horrible Publius Rotisserie here has been to you. He needs to learn respect.”</p><p> </p><p>“He does indeed,” the ghost whispered. “You will regret this, Publius Rotisserie. I told them not to let the bloody French in. Did they listen? No. And now I pay the price.” He disappeared through the wall and Black wheezed out a breath.</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t laugh,” Severus said through teeth still locked in a smile. “He might still be able to hear us.” He dug his elbow further into Black’s side for emphasis. “And get that stuff off your face before McGonagall comes around and figures out who Publius Rotisserie really is.”</p><p> </p><p>Black grumbled. “Hit me with <em>Finite</em> and see if that does anything.”</p><p> </p><p><em>Finite</em> did not do anything. “Maybe you can get it off with soap and water,” Severus suggested for lack of a better idea.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, if those two morons we call friends ever finish up. I don’t understand why they’ve been fighting each other like this.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus peeked at them around the side of the suit of armor. “I suspect this is an early stage of flirting.”</p><p> </p><p>“It is <em>not</em>,” Black hissed. Severus jerked so hard in surprise he banged his head on the side of the suit.</p><p> </p><p>“What do you mean, <em>it’s not</em>? It obviously is.”</p><p> </p><p>“They <em>can’t stand each other</em>, and you think they’re <em>flirting</em>?” Black’s eyes were as hot as coals in the ashy white landscape of his face.</p><p> </p><p>“Did you forget they got <em>married</em> last time, Black? Fine, forget I said anything.” He stood on his toes to peer over the armor’s shoulder. Lily and Potter were still facing each other with their wands at the ready, but Lily’s clothes were so stiff it looked like she could barely move, and Potter appeared to have his shoes stuck to the floor. For a moment Severus was hopeful that there would be a cease-fire (Lupin’s and Pettigrew’s faces peering out from behind another suit of armor on the opposite side of the hall told him they were hoping for the same thing), but then Potter twisted his face into the smirk that always made Lily want to hex his face off.</p><p> </p><p>They started throwing jinxes again with a vengeance and Severus sighed. So much for the cease-fire.</p><p> </p><p>Since neither individual was particularly mobile at the moment or skilled in shielding spells, almost all the wildly-flung hexes hit their intended targets. A few notable ones didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Severus saw Lupin and Pettigrew dive for cover when one of Lily’s overshot and hit their suit of armor, coloring it a hideous puke-green paisley pattern. Meanwhile, Lily hexed Potter’s glasses off his face, then went down to the floor hard when Potter hit her with a banana-peel hex. Potter followed up with another hex, but possibly owing to the fact that his glasses were now on the ceiling, missed her by a mile. The hex shot toward Severus’ and Black’s suit of armor, grazed its pauldron, and got Severus right in the face.</p><p> </p><p>He fell backward, clutching his head.</p><p> </p><p>“Snape? Snape? You all right?” Black babbled, trying to check his pulse of all things, and Severus shuddered.</p><p> </p><p>“What did it do to me?” he moaned, grabbing his hair in two fistfuls. “Am I horrible?”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, no more than usual. Don’t give me that look, that was funny. Actually, it doesn’t look like it did anything. It must have been a dud.”</p><p> </p><p>“Thank God,” Severus said fervently, and took his hands out of his hair.</p><p> </p><p>He tried to, anyway. His hair came with them.</p><p> </p><p>Severus sat (with someone he maybe still hated a little) there in a tiny alcove behind a singed and slightly dented suit of armor in a pile of his own hair while his former-former best friend and former-former worst enemy brawled in the hallway of a magical castle with the footsteps of a brigade of teachers rapidly approaching and wondered what, exactly, he had done to deserve this.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Black’s hysterical laughter didn’t help one bit. Then Severus realized that Black wasn’t the one laughing—he was. It was a bit unnerving, especially when he stared down at all his hair in his lap and noticed it looked like a shag rug had given birth on top of him. Black had scooted as far away from him as possible, and Severus didn’t blame him. It was all clumpy.</p><p> </p><p>McGonagall pried the suit of armor away from the alcove, probably intending to scare them out, and stopped short when she saw Severus and his (presumably) newly bald head and Black’s bone-white face, although she recovered admirably. “Infirmary, both of you,” she said in a broad Scottish accent that had thickened with her irritation. “Mr. Snape, please leave…all that…there. Madam Pomfrey can grow you new hair. Mr. Black, I will trust that was indeed a misunderstanding. Please do not antagonize the ghosts. They may be dead, but they can still immensely complicate my life and I will not hesitate to pass on the favor.”</p><p> </p><p>“Got it,” Black mumbled, and he and Severus shuffled toward Lupin and Pettigrew, who had similarly been flushed from their hiding place. Lupin’s trousers kept diving toward his ankles, held only in place by his death grip (and probably also his will to live life without being written into someone’s memoir of their Hogwarts days). Pettigrew was polka-dotted with hot pink. It wasn’t a bad color on him.</p><p> </p><p>“Why are we going to the infirmary?” Pettigrew asked, wringing his hands together. “We’re not sick, we’re jinxed.”</p><p> </p><p>“Madam Pomfrey’s the one who takes care of that,” Lupin said. “The other teachers’ll be busy cleaning up the rest of James and Lily’s mess.”</p><p> </p><p>“RIP James,” Black intoned, clasping his hands together in a mock prayer. “We regret to inform you that you’ll have detention for the next month. This is your own fault since normally you two are better at not getting caught. What gives? In the name of fairness, we’ll be raffling off your spot at the Gryffindor table and use the funds to buy ourselves sweets. Also we might replace you with Frank. Amen.”</p><p> </p><p>Lupin laughed, although his voice was a little strained and his knuckles were whitening around the belt loops of his trousers. It must have been a strong hex; they really wanted to go down. “You know that Frank doesn’t want anything to do with you and James. We’d have better luck with Severus.”</p><p> </p><p>“No you won’t,” Severus said automatically, preoccupied with his hands on his hairless head. He’d had hair to his shoulders as long as he could remember. It was bizarre to turn his head and not feel it moving against his skin, to not be able to see it. The nape of his neck and his ears felt naked and he was sure he had some bizarre tan line showing where the sun had never touched. Embarrassing, really.</p><p> </p><p>But maybe.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe he wouldn’t ask Madam Pomfrey to grow it back.</p><p> </p><p>“Wow, Snape, I think this is the first time I’ve really seen your face,” Pettigrew said, wringing his hands harder when Severus turned to look at him.</p><p> </p><p>“Terrible, isn’t it?” Black laughed, throwing his arm over Severus’ shoulders and pulling him down into a headlock. Severus realized what he had in mind and ducked, but by then it was too late. Mercifully, the noogie was short. Severus rewarded Black for his consideration by only hexing him a little when he let him go.</p><p> </p><p>“Ouch,” Black complained from the floor, where the Jelly-Legs jinx had landed him. “I was showing my love.”</p><p> </p><p>“Keep it to yourself,” Severus retorted, and put his wand away. “I don’t want it.”</p><p> </p><p>Somehow Black managed to communicate a leer even when his face was pressed into the ground, and Lupin rolled his eyes and nudged him in the ribs with the toe of his trainer. “I’m going ahead, I can’t keep holding these up. Come on, Peter.”</p><p> </p><p>Eventually, they made it to Madam Pomfrey, who gave Severus a dead-eyed stare. He sat on the stool in the waiting area and tried not to squirm. He hadn’t been here <em>that</em> often. Only the Charms incident, and the incident with Lucius, and the other Charms incident, and the Transfiguration incident, and the—</p><p> </p><p>All right, maybe she had some reason to side-eye him. Really, she owed him gratitude. He was giving her practice.</p><p> </p><p>Lupin’s strength finally gave out and his trousers hit the floor. Black and Pettigrew didn’t even try to hide their snickers. Madam Pomfrey politely ignored his state of undress as she canceled out the jinx, but when she was done Lupin’s cheeks were as bright red as his boxer shorts had been.</p><p> </p><p>She took care of Pettigrew’s spots and Black’s face, then turned to Severus. “How long do you want your hair?” she asked, wand aloft.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, that’s all right—”</p><p> </p><p>“You look like an egg with a face,” Black said. “Let her grow it out. For our sakes.” He placed a dramatic hand over his heart and swooned.</p><p> </p><p>If Madam Pomfrey hadn’t been right in front of him, Severus would have replied with an elegant finger, but the best he could do instead was shoot Black a dirty look and nod his begrudging acceptance. “Keep it short, please.”</p><p> </p><p>It was a weird feeling, growing a lot of hair out all at once. Kind of like jumping into a pool and feeling the little bubbles of air trapped beneath his body wriggle and wobble their way to the surface against his bare skin. Like that, but localized on his head. It was a weirder feeling to open his eyes and realize that everyone in the room had gone suspiciously quiet.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s the matter—it <em>grew</em>,” Severus said, hands again on his head. Yes, unless his senses were fooling him, that was indeed hair on his scalp, short and soft and downy against his fingers. “Why are you all looking like that?”</p><p> </p><p>Madam Pomfrey cleared her throat. “I may have something that can fix this.” She bustled off to a cabinet and started rustling around, and Severus turned to the other three in a panic.</p><p> </p><p>“Fix <em>what</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>Pettigrew looked like he was thirty seconds of hyperventilation away from an aneurism, Black had a smile on his face that was stretching wider and wider with every passing moment, and Lupin’s eyes were huge enough that Severus could see the white all the way around.</p><p> </p><p>“Fix <em>what</em>? What’s the matter?” he demanded, not caring if it came off a little hysterical. He grabbed his head again. He had thought it was hair, but could it be—fur? Very fine moss? <em>Feathers?</em></p><p> </p><p>Lupin coughed delicately, opened and closed his mouth a few times, then evidently decided delicacy was going to get him nowhere. Beside him, Black still looked like the Cheshire Cat that had gotten into the cream.</p><p> </p><p>Pettigrew, trembling, anxious Pettigrew, was finally the one who put Severus out of his misery. “I-it’s blue.”</p><p> </p><p>“FUCK.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Gift of the Animagi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The full moon was in two days, and Sirius was a horrible friend.</p><p> </p><p>(Snape probably would have retorted that Sirius being a horrible friend wasn’t conditional to the full moon being in two days, but Snape could go suck a bezoar. Except Snape hadn’t said that, so maybe that was a little rude. Except that was definitely something Snape would say. Sirius would call it a draw.)</p><p> </p><p>Sirius had just been so caught up in everything—seeing James again, not being a wanted criminal, conspiring with Snape about dimension-hopping-related shenanigans—that he’d somehow forgotten about Remus. Or, more specifically, Remus’ furry little problem.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius had tried yesterday, completely on autopilot, to shift into his Animagus form to take a sniff around (old habits die hard, ok), but he’d been brought up short in surprise. He didn’t have an Animagus form—none of them did now. While this was good because it meant Peter couldn’t fake his death and let Sirius take the fall like he had, it also meant that no one would be around to take care of Remus during the full moon when he was in pain and howling like a bean sídhe in the shack, hidden like an animal under the earth.</p><p> </p><p>So, yes, Sirius was a little bit of a horrible friend.</p><p> </p><p>But he was going to fix it!</p><p> </p><p>He moved through the halls of Hogwarts like a ghost—unseen, unnoticed, no more tangible than a whisper. At least, that was what he liked to think. He was rudely informed otherwise when he had to dodge to the wall to keep out of the way of a stampede of Hufflepuffs and tripped over the long, trailing hem of James’s invisibility cloak.</p><p> </p><p>In retrospect, he thought, the cool stone of the floor doing little to soothe either his wounded pride or his burning face, he should have taken into account that he wasn’t as tall as he had used to be. The cloak really did puddle quite a lot on the ground. He dusted off his dignity and struggled to his feet, which had been exposed to the world at large when he’d fallen. Luckily, the Hufflepuffs had been engrossed in a juicy bit of gossip—“Didn’t you hear? She got rejected and all, but then Slughorn <em>found</em> the love letter”—so they hadn’t noticed the pair of disembodied boots lying on the floor and (presumably) the body that went with them.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius almost wished he had enough time to tag behind them and listen in. He did love him some gossip.</p><p> </p><p>He made it to the library doors without incident, but once there he lingered impatiently for someone considerate enough to hold them open for a ghost. No such person was forthcoming. He took a chance on a girl going in and followed right at her heels with the extra length of James’s invisibility cloak gathered up in his fists so he didn’t step on it again. He could imagine all too clearly spilling, visible, out of space that had just been empty in front of Madam Pince, God, and everyone. Especially since he’d maybe borrowed James’s secret cloak without permission.</p><p> </p><p>He was going to put it back! James hadn’t told them about it until second year (<em>he</em> wasn’t supposed to have it either—it was an old family heirloom that he’d smuggled to school), so Sirius couldn’t have asked to use it, but this was a time-sensitive issue. He was sure the old James would have agreed with him. Honestly, it was the new James’s fault for not hiding it somewhere better than the hollow compartment at the bottom of his trunk. That’d been where he’d kept it last time, too.</p><p> </p><p>On his way to the Restricted Section (right in front of Madam Pince’s eagle eyes, he thought smugly), Sirius caught sight of Snape’s vibrant hair. Snape himself was looking both annoyed and vaguely bewildered: Peter and Remus had invaded his space and were sitting at his table doing homework like they had every right in the world to be there. Sirius laughed silently through his nose as he passed them and resolved to come back and bother them as soon as he was done.</p><p> </p><p>He caught himself humming the theme to <em>Mission Impossible</em> under his breath and nodded in approval at his own taste. It had been the last Muggle movie he’d snuck out of Grimmauld Place to see before he’d—fallen back in ’96. Sirius, who was something of a Muggle connoisseur, considered it a masterpiece.</p><p> </p><p>Of course, he thought, sliding into the Restricted Section like a seal into the sea, there wasn’t much point in even <em>having</em> a Restricted Section if all the alarm charms were based on motion. Invisibility cloaks were rare but there were plenty of magics, arcane and not, that rendered the user unseen. The Hogwarts staff had really dropped the ball on this one.</p><p> </p><p>Not that Sirius was complaining, of course.</p><p> </p><p>He skimmed his fingers just above the twitching covers of rows of books that rustled and muttered on their shelves, arm peeking out from the gap in the cloak. He was careful not to touch anything, though. Some of the texts here had curses mean enough to rival anything he’d be able to find in his family’s library and he’d rather not go through life speaking only in limericks or walking backwards everywhere he went.</p><p> </p><p>Now, where had it been last time?</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>A big, brown book with a leather cover—here it is! Wait, this isn’t it. Ok, this one! Shoot, this isn’t it either. Maybe this one? Nope. Not this one, or this one, or this one…Am I going to have to pull down every bloody book in this library?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He felt a trickle of sweat down his spine and ignored it. Invisibility cloaks might be useful and all, but they sure didn’t breathe anything like Egyptian cotton. He was looking forward to getting it off, just as soon as he found—</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Here it is!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>There was a stupid doodle on the binding that he’d recognize anywhere. He pulled the book down from the top shelf with both hands and a grunt of exertion. “Oh, how I hate you,” he whispered to it tenderly. “Written in Old English, you were such a pain in my arse. Why do you even exist? Why have you never been translated into something people can actually read?”</p><p> </p><p>The book did not respond. It had not been charmed to do so.</p><p>Sirius sat down, cloak like a tent around him, and pulled a few sheets of parchment out of his bag. A whispered spell flipped the book open to the right page, another whisper started to copy it to his loose parchment, and in less than two minutes Sirius was standing up again and putting the book back onto the shelf.</p><p> </p><p>“See you never,” he whispered to it, and blew it a kiss. As he turned to go he would have sworn he heard its pages rustle angrily, though they were still when he looked back.</p><p> </p><p>He got out of the library, whipped off the cloak after checking the coast was clear, and sauntered back in through the double doors toward Remus’ table with it shoved firmly into the bottom of his bag. James wouldn’t miss it any time soon. He and Evans had another week’s worth of detention to go after their little spat in the hallway and they wouldn’t be out for another hour. James’s frequent absences, however, hadn’t stopped Sirius from exercising a little creative liberty—just this afternoon, he’d roped James into what was probably the single best idea he’d ever had.</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>Lupin chewed on the end of his quill and squinted at Severus. “It’s blue, but it’s not <em>blue</em>-blue. Maybe there’s some green in it? I really wish I weren’t colorblind. Peter, what would you call it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Teal!” Pettigrew said with confidence. He was sneaking jellybeans from where he had hidden them beneath the table out of Madam Pince’s sight, and he offered the bag to Severus, who took a few and mumbled his thanks.</p><p> </p><p>Severus groaned. “Can’t we just accept that it’s blue and <em>stop talking about it?</em>” He ate a whiteish bean and made a face. Carpet-flavored.</p><p> </p><p>The hair had been a shock, admittedly. But there were weirder things in the wizarding world and it could have been a whole lot worse. <em>So much worse.</em> Severus had panicked and angsted and moped for a whole week, but eventually he’d consoled himself—at least he still had hair, and at least it wasn’t neon orange or something truly hideous—and resolved not to look in mirrors until he got used to the thought that this was what he was going to look like until someone (probably him) found a fix. However, no one else had gotten the memo that Severus was trying to acclimate himself slowly. Potter had realized just this morning that Severus’ hair wasn’t “Ravenclaw blue”, and this had sparked an ongoing discussion on what shade of blue it actually was.</p><p> </p><p>Severus was just trying to do his Astronomy homework.</p><p> </p><p>Didn’t these people have anything better to do?</p><p> </p><p>He ate another bean and his mood lifted a little. Lemon.</p><p> </p><p>“You fools, it’s <em>obviously</em> turquoise,” Black said from behind him. “Can you even read a color wheel?” Lupin’s and Pettigrew’s open-mouthed stares couldn’t mean anything good, and Severus turned around with a sigh to see what Black had done this time. He almost choked on his lemon-flavored spit.</p><p> </p><p>“What happened to <em>you</em>?” Black was as bald as an egg and as unconcerned as a Malfoy receiving a court summons.</p><p> </p><p>Black smirked like he’d been waiting for someone to ask and plopped down in the seat next to Severus, stretching out his interlocked fingers over the table. “Well,” he began, and Severus already knew he was going to regret this. “Snape’s hair might not be Ravenclaw blue, but that doesn’t mean mine can’t be <em>Gryffindor red</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh no,” Severus heard Pettigrew mutter softly to the side, and he stuffed another bean into his mouth in solidarity. Coffee. Oh, Merlin, he missed coffee. He was so busy trying not to tear up that he almost didn’t hear Black go on.</p><p> </p><p>“Just think about it! I’ll win us all the spirit points at Quidditch matches forever! Snape doesn’t even go to Quidditch matches!”</p><p> </p><p>“If you’re trying to get disowned, there’s got to be a better way,” Severus said. “Like asking nicely.” He put the rest of the beans in his pocket so he could enjoy the lingering coffee flavor for as long as possible and ignored Lupin and Pettigrew’s horrified expressions and Black’s little smirk.</p><p> </p><p>“And you’re bald because…” Lupin cut in desperately, clearly hoping to avoid a fight even though he shot Severus a dirty look.</p><p> </p><p>“That’s the <em>genius</em> of it.” Black leaned forward. “So, the hex was only supposed to make Evans’ hair fall out, not grow back in blue. James thinks he must have mispronounced something. If we can figure out what, we can mess with the pronunciation more to get different colors. Just think! We could switch up our hair whenever we want, and the teachers wouldn’t be able to do anything! This charm has to be basically impossible to remove, or Snape would have done it already. It’s brilliant!”</p><p> </p><p>Figured. Not even two full weeks had passed, and Black was already trying to capitalize on Severus’ personal tragedy.</p><p> </p><p>Pettigrew and Lupin looked at each other, then back at Black.</p><p> </p><p>“I like my hair the way it is,” Lupin offered. Pettigrew nodded furiously in agreement, with a look on his face that suggested he was scared of what hair color he might wake up to if he didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Black stuck his tongue out at them. “I figured,” he said in his best snotty Pureblood voice, “but I thought I’d mention it in case one of you decided not to be boring. Never mind.”</p><p> </p><p>“So what, you’re just going to walk around like that?” Severus said. “Spare us.”</p><p> </p><p>“No, I’m going to see Madam Pomfrey in a bit to see if it worked.” Black leaned back and cracked his knuckles. “The hardest part of this is going to be remembering which mispronunciations we’ve already used, so it’ll probably take a while.”</p><p> </p><p>“I forgot you live in a world where writing hasn’t been invented,” Severus said.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>You</em> try writing out a million different ways to pronounce <em>calvescete</em>,” Black sniped back.</p><p> </p><p>Severus opened his mouth to retort, but at that moment a textbook dropped on the table with a bang that nearly gave him heart palpations. They all jumped in unison and saw Alice, Lily’s friend, who seemed completely immune to Madam Pince’s glare (which was known to crack glass and drop the ambient temperature of a room by an average of twelve degrees).</p><p> </p><p>“Lily was supposed to help me with my Charms essay,” she said, arms crossed over her chest and doing her best to produce her own Pince-level glare. It would have been more intimidating if she hadn’t been five foot nothing. “By the transitive property of friendship, one of you has to help me now.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus exchanged a look with Black, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion he had. “Not it,” they said in unison, Pettigrew a heartbeat behind them.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Guys</em>,” Lupin said in frustration, pushing his sandy hair out of his eyes, but he seemed to accept his fate. He sighed and cleared off a space for Alice at the table.</p><p> </p><p>She plopped down and surveyed them. “Your hair is blue,” she told Severus.</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks, I noticed,” Severus said sourly.</p><p> </p><p>“But what <em>color</em> blue?” Lupin said, urgency in his voice. He brightened. “You’re a girl, right? You should know.”</p><p> </p><p>Alice popped her gum and scowled at the world at large in general and Remus in particular. “Do I look like that sort of girl?”</p><p> </p><p>She did not. Her tie was poorly knotted and her shirt was done up with the holes in the wrong buttons so the collar was uneven. She plucked at the worn leather bracelets on her wrists and pushed the ends of her flyaway chin-length hair behind her ears, squinting at Severus. “…turquoise? Bright turquoise. You’ll definitely never get lost in a crowd again, that’s for sure.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ha!” Black crowed, and promptly cowered under Madam Pince’s gaze. He continued quieter. “I <em>told</em> you it was turquoise!”</p><p> </p><p>“Ask Lily,” Alice said, picking up her quill. “She’d know.”</p><p> </p><p>“Lily said teal,” Remus said. “I think we’re at a draw.”</p><p> </p><p>“Thank Merlin,” Severus said. “Now can we accept it’s <em>blue</em> and <em>ignore it</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s miles better than what you used to have, anyway,” Alice said, popping her gum. “Oh, come on, Remus. You know it’s true. He always looked so stringy.”</p><p> </p><p>“Gee, thanks,” Severus said. He thought about getting mad and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, so he went back to his Astronomy homework. His star charts weren’t going to map themselves.</p><p> </p><p>As he did, he wondered if Alice had always been like…this. All he remembered (vaguely) of her from the dream was that she hadn’t liked him and had done her best to glare holes into him whenever they’d been in proximity, but the newspaper articles about her tragic descent into madness had all harped on about how “everyone who met her loved her” and “she lit up the room with her smile” and that she was “an angel on Earth, taken before her time.” Either the articles were wrong or this Alice was a lizard person in a suit.</p><p> </p><p>Halfway through his star charts, Black kicked him under the table and kept kicking him until Severus looked up in annoyance. Black glanced over to the doors and back, his meaning clear even in the face of Severus’ growing scowl.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re going already?” Lupin asked, looking up from where he had been trying to explain the difference between a “flick” and a “twitch” to Alice, who had been popping her gum in aggravation for the past twenty minutes. Pettigrew had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for the past ten.</p><p> </p><p>“Potions tutoring,” Severus lied, since that was the story he and Lucius had agreed upon.</p><p> </p><p>Lupin frowned. “I thought that was tomorrow?”</p><p> </p><p>“He has an exam in a few days, so he asked to reschedule.” Severus packed his books away and Black stood.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll come with you,” he said, stretching. “I think I left my Exploding Snap down there.” They left the library and Black sighed in relief. “Thank Merlin. Alice’s popping was driving me mad.”</p><p> </p><p>“Was she always like that?” Severus asked. “I didn’t realize she was such a punk.”</p><p> </p><p>“She mellowed out a lot by the time we graduated. A <em>lot</em>. But yeah, she was a right terror at this age. My nickname for her was Malice. Oddly enough, I never felt like she liked me very much.”</p><p> </p><p>“I can hardly imagine why,” Severus said, and Black stuck out his tongue.</p><p> </p><p>“She’s not all bad, though. Became an Auror early, top of her class. Great to have in a firefight. She’s just a bit of a stick in the mud about not doing illegal stuff, and that’s where all the fun is. Speaking of illegal stuff…”</p><p> </p><p>“Do I <em>want</em> to know?” Severus said in exasperated despair, aware that what he wanted didn’t usually matter when it came to Black.</p><p> </p><p>“Well—” Black looked up and down the hallway, then motioned Severus toward one of the alcoves dimly lit by a flickering sconce set into the wall. He set down his bag and pulled out a few rumpled pieces of parchment, and for a second Severus though he caught sight of silvery fabric at the bottom, although he was quickly distracted by what was on the parchment. He set his own bag down and scanned it in mounting disbelief.</p><p> </p><p>“You want to become an Animagus again?” he hissed. “Why?”</p><p> </p><p>“To take care of Remus,” Black said, just as quietly but no less adamantly. “I know you don’t like him—”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t…dislike him,” Severus interrupted. He avoided Black’s gaze out of principle. “But isn’t there anything else you could do to help him? Becoming an Animagus is <em>dangerous</em>. It’s a miracle all of you made it through all right last time.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not that dangerous,” Black argued.</p><p> </p><p>Severus scowled and pointed to the big red block letters at the bottom of the page. <em>Cauſon: miſuse may reſult in deathe or permanent incompleate tranſformations. Notte for wizzards under ſeventeen years of age. Do notte eate dairy 24 hours before attempting.</em></p><p> </p><p>“It’s a little dangerous,” Black amended. “And they weren’t kidding about that dairy thing. Peter ate cheese before he did it and he had such bad—” Severus cleared his throat and Black coughed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. Is there anything you could do to make it safer?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus frowned and looked at the pages in his hand again. “I could try,” he said slowly, “but I can’t make the potion for you. An Animagus transformation is such a personal piece of magic, having someone else interfere would ruin it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hell,” Black said, reaching up to card his hand through his hair in frustration, having forgotten that he had none at the moment. His fingers squeaked against his scalp.</p><p> </p><p>“I can experiment with the ingredients and see if I can make it more stable. Would it just be you, or would you want to involve Potter and Pettigrew again?”</p><p> </p><p>“Peter doesn’t get to be a part of this,” Sirius said, suddenly cold. “I want James to do it at some point in case he ever needs a card up his sleeve, but he doesn’t need it right now. I’ll do it alone this time.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus chewed on his lip. “I should get Lily to do it too sometime. For the same reason. But won’t they notice if you and Lupin are always gone the same nights? Also, does Lupin know you know he’s a werewolf?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll figure it out,” Black said with confidence, the one commodity that he never had in short supply.</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook his head and sighed. Not his problem. “Ok, let’s see…” He read off the parchment. “You hold a leaf of mandrake in your mouth for a lunar month, say an incantation every morning and night, then at the end of the month you put the leaf into a potion and do some fiddly stuff. Then you drink it during a lightning storm and think very hard about not being human. That doesn’t seem too bad—oh, it calls for a Death’s-Head hawk moth chrysalis. Those are hard to get ahold of.”</p><p> </p><p>“I found a jar of them in my family’s attic last time round,” Black said. “Probably about a million years old, but they worked fine. I was going to bring them back with me after Christmas break. No way my mother would mail them to me.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’ll give you time to start on the mandrake portion,” Severus murmured. “I can have the rest of the ingredients figured out by then—”</p><p> </p><p>“Ingredients for what?” A voice said behind them, and someone snatched the parchment out of Severus’ hand. “What are you two muttering about?”</p><p> </p><p><em>Well, shit</em>, Severus thought, and immediately let his face relax into an innocently interested mask while his dueling hand went to his wand. He hadn’t been a spy for fifteen years for nothing—he could neutralize the enemy and get the parchment back, then decide from there if he needed to kill them or just wipe their minds—</p><p> </p><p>Except he couldn’t, because he was eleven and <em>James bloody Potter</em> had the parchment in his hands, staring at it with wide eyes behind his foolish round spectacles, and Lily butted in at his side, craning her neck so she could peer down at it too.</p><p> </p><p>“The Animagus transformation,” Potter whispered reverently.</p><p> </p><p>Severus felt like bashing his head against a wall. He’d never thought Potter and Lily could be within ten feet of each other without arguing, but apparently, they could cooperate long enough to sneak up behind him in a dimly lit hall with a very illegal transformation spell in his hands when they sensed an opportunity to maximize inconvenience to him and their own personal safety.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” he said with a noncommittal smile, stretching his hand out for the parchment, “that’s nothing important. McGonagall gave it to me as a theoretical exercise. Shouldn’t you still be in detention?”</p><p> </p><p>Potter held it out of his reach. “Flitwick let us out early for good behavior. Wait, <em>McGonagall</em> gave this to you? No way. Do you know how illegal this is? We’re <em>so</em> underage.” The words were not as troubling as the smile stretching wide across his face. “Theoretical exercise my arse. Did you steal this from the library?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus pretended not to notice how Black winced, although he did sigh on the inside.</p><p> </p><p>“Sev, what’s he talking about?” Lily squinted at the page. “That’s what McGonagall can do, right? She can turn into a cat.”</p><p> </p><p>Potter shook his head. “It’s not just cats, you can be any kind of animal. My uncle was a wolf. I’ve wanted to be an Animagus for ages—”</p><p> </p><p>Black grabbed the parchment back from Potter—“Hey!”—and stuffed it in his robes, glaring. “We are not becoming Animagi,” he said in the sternest voice Severus had ever heard from him. “It’s dangerous and we’re eleven.”</p><p> </p><p>“If it’s so dangerous, why are you going to do it?” Lily shot back. “You were talking about getting started on it.”</p><p> </p><p>“That was completely hypothetical.” Severus said, and wished he could invoke the Muggle-only excuses of LARPing or tabletop gaming to explain away a weird conversation. “Hypothetically, if he was going to try an illegal transformation, hypothetically he’d want to start it over break. But since he isn’t, he won’t. Hypothetically.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah, I see.” Potter nodded wisely and tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. “So, if I hypothetically wanted to join in, I hypothetically could, right?” He winked at them.</p><p> </p><p>Black and Severus looked at each other. “There’s nothing to join,” Severus said, a little weakly.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, I get why you have to <em>say</em> that,” Potter said, tapping his nose again with an extra wink.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, <em>hypothetically</em>,” Lily said, glaring at Potter, “you’d get in trouble if any of the teachers found out, right? So, hypothetically, you would have no choice but to let us in on it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Evans, did you miss the part where this is very illegal?” Black asked politely, an edge to his smile. “I mean, it would hypothetically be illegal. If we were doing it, which we’re not. Because it’s illegal.”</p><p> </p><p>Lily squared her shoulders and stood up taller. “I won’t let you outdo me,” she told Black and Potter (but mostly Potter). “And Sev’s doing it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Actually, no,” Severus cut in. “Or, I wouldn’t be. Hypothetically.” He wondered in the back of his mind what had caused such a change in Lily. The Lily from the dream would have ratted them all out to the teachers in an instant, not decided to play along with Potter’s insanity. Had she always been this way? Or had she just changed from Potter chipping away at her with remarks and hexes and challenges like a rock chipped at obsidian to create a blade?</p><p> </p><p>“Come on, Snape, it’ll be great fun—”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, Sev—”</p><p> </p><p>“Hypothetically,” Severus said, suddenly very tired, “maybe. Hypothetically, let’s talk about this tomorrow.” He bent to pick up his bag and left the hall without another word, even though Lily called after him.</p><p> </p><p>Back in Ravenclaw Tower, he had the dorm to himself for a while, but it wasn’t too long until the door opened and Black popped his head in. He wasn’t bald any longer, but his hair remained stubbornly black. He looked up and down the room warily, and Severus sighed and motioned him in. “No one’s here yet. Your bag’s on the bed. What did you tell Potter you needed the cloak for? And how did you get in here? I would have thought this was the one dorm you couldn’t break into.”</p><p> </p><p>Black came in all the way, shutting the door behind him. Severus’ actual bag dangled from the crook of his elbow. “First of all, hurtful. I’m great at riddles, thanks very much. Second, you guys need an actual password because, surprise surprise, not every person with a brain goes to Ravenclaw. Third, he doesn’t know I borrowed it. I’ll need to figure out how to sneak it back into his trunk. Fourth, never mind all that, how are we going to deal with them knowing?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus tilted his head and leaned against the wall. “It’s earlier than we planned, but we did agree it would be good for them to be Animagi. If I can figure out how to make it safer, maybe that could work and we’d just be ahead of schedule. Or I can give them dud ingredients for the potion. If the transformation doesn’t work, maybe they’ll lose interest.”</p><p> </p><p>“Not James,” Black groaned. “Once he wants something he won’t stop until he gets it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Then we can pretend it didn’t work for any of us and say the spell must be wrong or fake. Or we can burn up that parchment and pretend we don’t know what they’re talking about—hell, I could use Legilimency to make them forget. I could use the practice.”</p><p> </p><p>“No.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged. “Whatever. So, that’s how we’ll deal with them knowing.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t think James would actually tell the teachers,” Black said after a moment of thought. “What about Evans?”</p><p> </p><p>“I would have said she would a few months ago, but now I think she’d rather not jeopardize her chances to one-up Potter.” Severus almost gnawed a thumbnail but stopped himself just in time. That was a terrible habit for a potions master to get into. He sighed. “We don’t have to let them be a part of this, but we should probably pretend to so we don’t make them think we’re hiding something. Which we are. A lot of somethings. How does this keep getting complicated?”</p><p> </p><p>Black shrugged a shoulder. “I cleverly keep my plans from becoming complicating by never making a plan in the first place,” he said.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re a paragon of wisdom.” Severus rolled his eyes, but he was thinking of something else. “Can you keep two mandrake leaves in your mouth at a time?”</p><p> </p><p>“What? No, the magic counts that as cheating. We tried.”</p><p> </p><p>“Too bad. That could have made things a lot simpler.”</p><p> </p><p>“If you don’t make a plan, nothing can go not according to plan. That’s my motto.”</p><p> </p><p>“And here I thought you were having a stroke.”</p><p> </p><p>“Shut it. Oh, by the way, when I realized this wasn’t my bag, I took the liberty of snooping a bit,” Black said, reaching into Severus’ bag and rifling around. “What the hell is <em>this</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>“Read the label, Black. It’s hair dye.”</p><p> </p><p>“But this is expensive! This is the brand my mother uses. I know you’re not thrilled with the hair, which is another reason why you don’t deserve it, but where the hell did you get the cash for it?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus sighed and reached over to pluck the little bottle from Black’s grasp. “I didn’t,” he said. “Lucius got it for me. He’s the one person who’s more offended by my hair than I am.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, isn’t that a good thing?” Black said. “This is the magical stuff, so it’ll last for a while—”</p><p> </p><p>“They don’t work.” Severus tossed the bottle onto his bed. “Magical, Muggle, doesn’t matter. I have a whole collection of them under the sink. They just run right out of my hair.”</p><p> </p><p>“Wait, he got you <em>Muggle</em> hair dye?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus smiled grimly. “Brought it to me like he was holding nuclear waste in his bare hands. I have no idea where he got it.” He nodded to the bottle on the bed. “I thought it was his last resort, but today he gave me <em>this</em>. It must be the last magical dye on the market.”</p><p> </p><p>“But…why?” Black said, looking completely at a loss.</p><p> </p><p>The truth was that Severus had no idea, but he shrugged. “He’s probably horrified that I’ll clash with every colorful color I’ll ever wear again.”</p><p> </p><p>Black laughed and reclaimed his bag, pulling Potter’s cloak over him. “I don’t think you’ve worn a colorful color in your life,” his voice said from nowhere. “I’m going to put this back, then get James to hex my hair off again. See you tomorrow.”</p><p> </p><p>The door opened and closed by itself. Severus was just paranoid enough to doubt that Black had left, but a few wildly-flung jinxes reassured him of his solitude. He picked up the little vial of hair dye up from the bed and headed to the bathroom. It wouldn’t work just like the ones before it, he was sure—but on the other hand, what if it did? He may have accepted his fate, but the thought of being so easily recognizable for the rest of his life made his stomach churn. No one had noticed him when he’d been sallow and black-haired, unless it was to remark disparagingly about his appearance then forget about him. Who wouldn’t notice him with blue hair?</p><p> </p><p>Magical dyes were easy to use. Severus dabbed a drop onto the crown of his head, chanted the charm on the back of the bottle three times, and looked in the mirror as the color spread throughout his hair until it was black again. A nicer black than what he had used to have, as if that made any sense. He worked his fingers across his head then looked to see if the dye had rubbed off. It hadn’t, of course it hadn’t, and Severus laughed at himself a little for thinking a magical dye would have the same problems as a Muggle one.</p><p> </p><p>But this dye was no better than the others, and as Severus watched, the blue reappeared and the black started to collect and drip off the ends of his hair. He sighed and stuck his head under the faucet so it wouldn’t ruin his shirt, then put the new bottle of hair dye under the sink with its brethren.</p><p> </p><p>While he was toweling off, he thought about Lucius, whose behavior since The Incident had been strange even for him. He’d kept catching Severus in the halls between classes and after meals to press new bottles into Severus’ hands. Every time Severus had reported that another one had failed to take, Severus thought he could see a shadow cross Lucius’ face. It didn’t make sense.</p><p> </p><p>Not that Lucius made sense—he didn’t, as a rule. He was the heir to a vast fortune and an even vaster melodramatic family history of intrigue, assassinations, and money laundering, so of course he’d be hard for normal people to understand. But that didn’t explain why he’d been so adamant about trying to correct this problem.</p><p> </p><p>What Severus had said to Black certainly had some truth in it. Lucius’ conviction about Matters Regarding Fashion™ rivalled his Pureblood ideology in both strength and usefulness, and he’d visibly winced upon seeing the color of Severus’ hair (although upon being asked, he’d bravely claimed that it “wasn’t horrible”). But Lucius, while shallow, wasn’t stupid. And Lucius, while wealthy, didn’t blow his money for no reason.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe Lucius had been planning on embracing their accidental familial bond publicly—being able to draw on Severus’ many talents under the guise of family matters could only benefit him. (It would explain why he was dismayed by Severus’ disrespectable hair. Purebloods would make it a laughingstock.) But Lucius realistically wouldn’t be able to do anything like that until his father died. Unless he’d told his father about his little slip? And his father was ok with the idea of a half-blood acknowledged with family ties? Severus frowned at himself in the mirror. Not from what he’d heard about Abraxas’ temper. Or his Pureblood ideology, which Severus had heard was even stricter than Lucius’.</p><p> </p><p>If not that, then what?</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>Severus found out the reason about a week and a half later, when he’d bullied Lucius into exerting his Prefect privileges to let them go hunting for potions ingredients well after curfew for the third night in a row.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re the worst,” Lucius grumbled, wrapping his cloak more tightly around himself against the wind that cut like broken glass. “I’m almost out of concealer because of you.”</p><p> </p><p>“What does that have to do with me?” Severus asked, plucking fat red yew berries off a low branch and dropping them in one of the glass jars nestled in the wicker basket at his feet. He’d been working on improving a few different potions in his sessions with Lucius and had run clear through some of Slughorn’s supplies. He hadn’t wanted to wait for a new shipment—Slughorn didn’t know the meaning of haste—so he was collecting what he could himself while Lucius stood around and complained about freezing in the autumn air.</p><p> </p><p>At least, that was his excuse. He was really sourcing the ingredients for the Animagus potion that Slughorn didn’t have. Severus kept picking berries with fingers that were rapidly becoming too cold to feel and kept his eyes out anything else he might need. He’d have to requisition Potter’s invisibility cloak from Black to collect it all in a few nights under the new moon. Some of the ingredients were unique to the Animagus potion and Severus didn’t want to risk Lucius recognizing them.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius scowled fiercely and tried to burrow even further into his cloak, though Severus was certain the action was merely for sympathy and that the cloak had warming charms spelled into every stitch.</p><p> </p><p>“I have <em>eye</em> <em>bags</em> because of you. Eye bags! My poor beautiful skin is suffering because you can’t wait two weeks for more ingredients.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sorry,” Severus said, and his breath puffed out in a cloud in the cold. He pulled the hood of his coat down further over his ears. “But didn’t doing this get you out of going to Slughorn’s club yesterday?”</p><p> </p><p>“But I went back to my dorm and <em>slept!</em>” Lucius wailed. “And the Halloween party’s next week, and I have to help plan it, and—”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s next week?” Severus asked, startled, and an ache started to build up in his stomach and the back of his eyes. He cleared his throat hard and told himself sternly there was no reason for Halloweens to hurt him anymore.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius threw up his hands. “See! I spend my valuable time planning it, and you don’t even know it’s happening! Where’s the justice in life?”</p><p> </p><p>“You’d enjoy life a lot less if it was fair,” Severus muttered under his breath. More audibly, he said, “I think I see some woundwort over there.” He stood up and strode deeper into the forest, holding up his lantern in rejection of the weak light of the waning moon that leaked through the bare branches above. He went on his knees and reached for the woundwort.</p><p> </p><p>The woundwort reached back.</p><p> </p><p>“Ow!”</p><p> </p><p>Severus cradled his hand to his chest and glared at the plant. Merlin, but that hurt his professional pride. Getting bitten by <em>woundwort</em>, of all things.</p><p> </p><p>“Do you need to see Pomfrey?” Lucius asked, coming up behind him with his own lantern and his wand held at the ready. They weren’t deep in the Forbidden Forest, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.</p><p> </p><p>Severus grimaced. “I can wait until we go back in.” He flexed his fingers and winced, but he’d worked through worse. He turned back to the woundwort but made sure to subdue it properly this time before starting to pluck off its flowers.</p><p> </p><p>“Speaking of Pomfrey, has she figured out anything about your hair?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook his head, fingers still busy. “She said if none of her counter-curses worked on it, probably nothing will. And it’s not like it’s life-threatening.” He glanced at Lucius’ face, which blatantly disagreed. “Listen…I know you hate it. I get it, I really do. But why have you wanted so badly to make it black again? I know all those hair dyes must have been expensive.”</p><p> </p><p>“Not for me,” Lucius said. After a moment he surprised Severus by sighing heavily and sitting down on a fallen tree, still pulling his cloak around himself like a caterpillar spinning itself into a cocoon. Light from the lanterns flickered over his face, but the shadow that lingered there didn’t come from them. “Christmas break isn’t far off.”</p><p> </p><p>“I guess not,” Severus said, wondering where this was going.</p><p> </p><p>“And I suppose you’ll be going home?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, I will. Are you worried about the Muggles?” Severus took a break to blow on his frozen fingers. Gloves weren’t conducive to this sort of work. On the bright side, he couldn’t feel the woundwort bite anymore. “Or the Statute of Secrecy? You don’t have to be. They’ve figured out blue hair all on their own,” he said, tucking his hands into his armpits.</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t care about <em>Muggles</em>,” Lucius said in the impatient tone he used when someone just didn’t get something. “I’m worried about how your parents will react.” He made eye contact with Severus and said, softly, like he was afraid saying it louder would make it more real, “How your <em>father</em> is going to react.”</p><p> </p><p>And in that instant, with their eyes locked, Severus knew that Lucius also understood the terror of hearing his father’s footsteps on the stair.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, Lucius, you never said, Severus thought with a despair muted by years of choosing not to remember it. Should I have recognized it? Did you know about me then too?</p><p> </p><p>He still had his hands in his armpits—to his dull amusement, it must look like he was hugging himself for comfort. He released a long cloud of breath, watching its edges highlighted with the soft gold from the lantern before it dissipated. Severus hadn’t thought about his father in months, not since he’d come to school. The letters from his mother hadn’t mentioned him at all, and Severus hadn’t asked, assuming it was the same as it always was.</p><p> </p><p>It had been easy to forget about his father. In the dream, Tobias had died of liver failure when Severus was twenty-six. Severus had lived for a long time after that without a father, and he couldn’t have said that he’d missed him.</p><p> </p><p>“He’s not bad about magic when he’s sober,” he said, staring at the thin, spiky leaves of a nearby patch of aconite, his own voice matched to Lucius’ whisper. This was still a secret not even Lily knew. Lily had never known it. Severus hadn’t wanted her to know. “But lately he’s been sober less and less.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius closed his eyes and nodded once.</p><p> </p><p>Severus didn’t know why he’d said anything. Lucius spilling secrets didn’t mean he had to share his own—it might have been better if he hadn’t. But there was something about the way the lanterns surrounded them in a circle of golden light against the darkness, the way that the still heavy silence of the trees seemed to invite him to speak, rustling in commiseration with what few leaves they had left.</p><p> </p><p>“He won’t get mad if he doesn’t notice,” Severus went on, trying to convince himself as well as Lucius. “If I can stay out of the house…” Maybe he shouldn’t even go back home for the holidays. But he missed his mother—he was eleven and that was his privilege.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius drummed his fingers against his thigh. “You could shave your head? Or stay with someone else. Or change your name and move to Argentina.”</p><p> </p><p>“What’s in Argentina?” Severus asked distantly, still reeling from the unpleasant realization that he’d have to deal with his father until the old bastard finally drank himself to death again.</p><p> </p><p>“Argentinians, mostly. Some Germans. Oh, that’s where they raise Euphraisian cattle. Best beef in the world. A bit pricey, though.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus quailed to think what Lucius might consider pricey.</p><p> </p><p>He pulled himself back to the conversation and his woundwort. “I can get a hat,” he said to himself. His father might not even notice him, but it was better safe than sorry. There was no telling what might set him off, or what he might do.</p><p> </p><p>And the damned Ministry would notice if Severus used his wand to blast Tobias to kingdom come. Oh, how cruel to be eleven again.</p><p> </p><p>“A <em>hat</em>,” Lucius whispered, like he’d come to some great revelation. There were stars in his eyes. Or maybe just the reflection of two flickering lanterns. “Of course!”</p><p> </p><p>Severus pushed himself to his feet and his eyes fell again on the patch of aconite. He stared—was the answer really that simple? Could the universe finally be giving him a break? “Let’s go in, Lucius,” he said, grabbing the handle of his basket in his uninjured hand. “I’ve got everything I need for now.”</p><p> </p><p>For now, he thought to himself. Until he came back to harvest that aconite under the new moon, when the darkness and the starlight would preserve the most powerful of its magic even after he’d pulled it by its roots from the earth.</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>When Black snuck his way into the Ravenclaw table at breakfast, for once Severus wasn’t irritated. Instead, he thought, <em>finally!</em> and shut the heavy Potions text that had been giving him a headache for the past two days and that he’d kept almost dripping jam on despite his best efforts.</p><p> </p><p>“I heard you finally got on Madam Pomfrey’s last nerve,” he said to Black, pulling the book on his lap so Black would have somewhere at the table to sit. As usual, the rest of his House was occupied in arguing with each other, but for once Severus hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention.</p><p> </p><p>Black, bald for maybe the fortieth or fiftieth time since he’d decided to embody Gryffindor spirit, dropped his head down onto the table and nearly put his face on a platter of pastries for his trouble. “I didn’t think she meant it,” he groaned into the wood. “She says she won’t do any more hair growth spells on me unless I’m literally dying, and I’m still no closer to having hair that isn’t black.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, <em>woe is you</em>,” Severus said, poking his eggs with his fork. Spite practically dripped off his words.</p><p> </p><p>“I was so certain I could talk her around,” Black moaned. “I told her she’d be supporting my pursuit of Magical Progress. I even told her she could put her name on the patent with James and me. But Pomfrey is a cruel, cruel woman.” He left his newly bald head down on the table for a moment and silently contemplated his fate, then lifted it up and scowled at Severus. “But you didn’t call me over here to make fun of me. Or maybe you did. That’s something you would do.”</p><p> </p><p>“Normally, yes,” Severus said, and heaved the old Potions textbook back onto the table, shoving Black to make him make room for it. “But I’ve been a little busy lately.” He opened the book to the page he’d saved with his napkin and pointed to the text at the top.</p><p> </p><p>Black’s eyes went wide and he practically ripped the book from Severus’ hands to haul it closer to him. “<em>Wolfsbane potion?</em>” he all but shouted, except the shout was no louder than a whisper and directly in Severus’ ear.</p><p> </p><p>“I just remembered it a few nights ago,” Severus said, valiantly fighting the urge to pop Black one across the mouth. “The problem is—”</p><p> </p><p>“You mean we don’t have to do—all the stuff we’re hypothetically not doing? We can—”</p><p> </p><p>“Shut up and listen, you idiot.” Severus waited until Black had made sullen eye contact. “I can’t make this. I can’t get the ingredients.” He pointed to two, fire opals and unicorn horn, and sighed. “I forgot how bloody expensive these are—and I’d have to make <em>seven doses</em> every month. He’d have to drink it the whole week going up to the full moon for it to be effective. I don’t know how much your allowance is, but I guarantee it’s not enough.”</p><p> </p><p>“Couldn’t you, you know—” Black dropped his voice and leaned forward, like anyone could possibly hear them over the Ravenclaw din, “—Slughorn’s cabinet?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook his head. “They’re too valuable. He doesn’t keep them with the rest and he’d notice if they went missing.”</p><p> </p><p>Black’s eyes sparked with outrage. “Why can’t <em>he</em> make it for him?”</p><p> </p><p>“If it’s done even the tiniest bit wrong, it becomes a poison. Slughorn won’t take that risk—imagine the damage to his reputation if he killed a student. Or was known to associate with werewolves. And I can’t offer to do it. I don’t have the qualifications.”</p><p> </p><p>“Dumbledore’s a Legilimens, you could—”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>No</em>,” Severus said. “I’m not telling Dumbledore about this. <em>Any</em> of this. And don’t you dare either or I swear it’ll be the end of our truce.”</p><p> </p><p>Black’s face hardened. Severus glared back until a particularly loud shriek of objection from somewhere else on the table broke their staring contest.</p><p> </p><p>“What the hell are they talking about this time?”</p><p> </p><p>“Not a bloody clue.” Severus pulled the book back toward himself and flipped pages until he found the section he was looking for. “I can’t make Wolfsbane, but I did discover something else.” He pushed it back to Black.</p><p> </p><p>Black scanned it and frowned, obviously with no idea what he was supposed to be looking at.</p><p> </p><p>Severus sighed and tapped a section. “Here.” When Black didn’t jump out of his seat for joy, Severus sighed again and deigned to explain. “Aconite is the active ingredient in Wolfsbane. It’s a poison, so when it’s imbued with magic like it is when you pick it on the night of a new moon, it literally “kills the wolf”, as in killing the dark wolfy magic that makes werewolves want to eat people. Although they still transform. Nobody’s been able to figure that part out. The problem is, you don’t want to also kill the actual werewolf, so you counter the aconite with the fire opals and unicorn horn so it becomes poisonous in magic only.”</p><p> </p><p>"And this matters because—?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m getting there. But there’s another problem.” Severus tapped the page more emphatically. “I’ve read the whole account of developing this potion. They had trouble “killing the wolf” without hurting the werewolf because when they interrupted the dark magic that makes werewolves murdery, they also interrupted the magic that made the werewolf transform.” He looked at Black for any sign of comprehension but found nothing, so he said it slower. “The magic that makes them <em>transform</em> from a <em>human</em> to a <em>wolf</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Or a wolf-looking monster thing. Close enough.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh!” Black said in sudden realization, and the fires lit back up in his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>Severus nodded in satisfaction and went on. “The werewolves’ transformation was slow and apparently very painful when the aconite mixture interrupted the curse magic. So the researchers figured out another component of the potion to—I guess you could say they made a bridge in the magic, to make it easier for them to change from human to wolf without getting contaminated by the curse.” He tapped a lower section of the page. “And I have all the ingredients I need for that part.” He was conscious of the borrowed-not-stolen invisibility cloak in the bottom of his bag.</p><p> </p><p>“You really think you can make the transformation easier?” Black said, voice low with either urgency or awe. Severus chose to believe it was the latter. “Doesn’t it matter that it was made for a Dark Arts potion?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shrugged. “All magic’s fundamentally the same. We just put it in different categories because it’s convenient to study it that way. If it worked in a Dark Arts potion, it should have the same effect in a Transfiguration potion. And it shouldn’t disrupt any of the ingredients in our potion.”</p><p> </p><p>“Shouldn’t, huh,” Black said. “You’re not certain?”</p><p> </p><p>“The theory’s sound.” Severus flipped another page of the textbook. “And I’m very good at what I do, but I’m not Merlin. There’s always a risk.” He glanced at Black, who didn’t look reassured. “I can always give them dud ingredients. We don’t have to decide what to do now.”</p><p> </p><p>Black stole a pastry off the platter in front of him and ate it in silent contemplation. It was funny how much his forehead wrinkled up when he tried to think.</p><p> </p><p>“You could try it on me,” he said suddenly.</p><p> </p><p>“What?”</p><p> </p><p>“Let’s give them dud potions this time, and you give me the new one. I’ll be able to tell if it’s any easier than last time.”</p><p> </p><p>“There’s a very tiny chance it might kill you,” Severus pointed out, drumming his fingers on the textbook.</p><p> </p><p>Black shrugged. “I’ll take it.”</p><p> </p><p><em>Gryffindors</em>, Severus thought, and sighed again. “Fine. I’ve got all the ingredients now except the hawk moth chrysalises, so all we need to do is wait for the full moon right before we leave for break to start the mandrake leaves. That’ll give us enough time to figure out the potions once we get back.”</p><p> </p><p>Black puffed a breath out of his cheeks. “I guess we’re doing this, then.”</p><p> </p><p>“You’d better be doing more than guessing,” Severus said tartly, slamming the textbook shut. “I haven’t been traipsing around in the woods getting ingredients for the past five nights for you to be <em>guessing</em>.” He stood. “Now come on so I can give back what I borrowed from you.”</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t want to hold on to Potter’s cloak any longer than he had to—he was too tempted to keep it.</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>The train whistled and Severus hunched further into his coat, staring around at the mass of students in cloaks and hats and scarves trying to pile their trunks into the train. The midmorning sun glinted off the piles of snow that were getting turned to slush under a horde of trampling feet, and Severus shifted in his thin trainers—he didn’t want to spend the ride back in wet shoes. He moved back from the crowd onto the stone steps leading up to the doors of Hogwarts and watched from there with his trunk at his side.</p><p> </p><p>Lily was standing in a huddle with Alice and some of the other Gryffindor girls, although she hadn’t been talking much for the past few days ever since they’d started the ritual with the mandrake leaf. She was obviously too afraid to lose it. Potter, on the other hand, was gabbing away to Lupin and Pettigrew like his life depended on it. Severus wondered if he’d charmed the leaf to stick to the inside of his cheek or the roof of his mouth, then wondered if that would invalidate the process. He’d have to ask Black.</p><p> </p><p>The leaves Severus had given them weren’t actually mandrake leaves, but useless lookalikes. Luckily, neither was good enough at Herbology to have noticed.</p><p> </p><p>Severus didn’t feel bad about deceiving them. It was what they deserved for eavesdropping.</p><p> </p><p>Black had a real leaf, and so did Severus. He wasn’t planning on undergoing the transformation—he’d told them all as much—but it didn’t hurt to have options. If the alteration he’d made to the potion turned out to work on Black, it might be for the best if Severus could do a transformation of his own at the same time. An extra trump card was never a bad idea when dealing with Purebloods and blood purists alike.</p><p> </p><p>He caught sight of Lucius in the swirling crowd of students trying in vain to impose some measure of order, and it wasn’t too long before Lucius looked up and caught sight of him in return. Severus gave him a wave, expecting to get a curt Pureblood nod in return, but to his surprise Lucius came toward him, picking his way around puddles of slush and loud groups of Gryffindors with equal distaste.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ve finally found you,” he said to Severus as soon as he was close enough for their conversation to be fairly private. “Come on, I have something for you.”</p><p> </p><p>“Shouldn’t you be putting people on the train?” Severus asked, but followed Lucius inside.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius snorted, elegantly. “They can survive without me for five minutes.” He stopped in a little out-of-the-way hallway and turned to face Severus. “Here,” he said, and pulled something out of the pocket of his robe without any of his usual fanfare.</p><p> </p><p>Severus stared at him, then at the thing in his hand. Slowly, he reached out to take it, and it revealed itself as a newsboy cap in gray tweed. He looked at it, then at Lucius, who seemed rather nervous. That was deeply uncharacteristic of him.</p><p> </p><p>“They didn’t have very many options, and I couldn’t put you in a fedora. It would be too cruel. And you couldn’t pull off a beret. I’m sorry if I’ve made you look like a 1920s Irish mobster. It was the one I thought you’d be most likely to wear.”</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks?” Severus said. He thought he masked his bewilderment rather well. “I’ll, uh, cherish it.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius beamed. “Put it on!” Severus did so, still confused and hiding it, and Lucius made a pleased noise. “Oh, excellent. It works.”</p><p> </p><p>“It—what? What does it do?” Severus pulled it off his head and examined it all over, but as far as he could tell, it was a normal hat.</p><p> </p><p>“You didn’t know, and you still put it on?” Lucius shook his head in amused disbelief. “You’re too trusting. And I would never give you a <em>normal</em> hat—hats are <em>so</em> out of fashion. Here.” He held out his hand and Severus passed it back. Lucius put it on over his own head and—</p><p> </p><p>Severus gaped as Lucius’ white-blond hair turned black.</p><p> </p><p>“The illusions are tied up in the stitching, so the enchantment won’t wear off,” Lucius said, sounding very proud of himself. He took off the hat and traced around its brim with his fingertip. “I had them put on a waterproofing charm, and a heating charm, and a self-cleaning charm, and an anti-crumple charm—oh, and a charm to keep it on your head, as long as you’re not being ridiculous on a broom. Not that I would expect that of you, but you never know.”</p><p> </p><p>He held the hat out to Severus again.</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ vision seemed to be doing something funny. He blinked hard a few times to see if that would make things less fuzzy. It didn’t help. “I can’t take this,” he said, and his voice sounded odd to his own ears, thin and wobbly. “This must have been expensive—”</p><p> </p><p>Lucius shook his head and cut him off. The expression on his face was awful and earnest—Severus had never seen anything like it on him before.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ve gotten rather used to you,” Lucius said. “I wouldn’t mind keeping you around for a while.”</p><p> </p><p>He stuffed the hat down the neckline of Severus’ robe and stepped away. “Merry Christmas,” he called behind him as he went. “See you next year.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus pulled out the hat and held it in his hands, staring at it with vision that became more and more watery until finally he had to blink. Boiling tears ran down his cheeks and he wiped at them impatiently with his sleeve.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius wanted to keep him around. That made sense, that was for his own purposes. That was a reason for him to give Severus the hat.</p><p> </p><p>Except Severus knew that wasn’t what he had meant.</p><p> </p><p>He breathed out hard and found a bathroom to splash water on his face and hide his tears. He stared at himself in the water-spotted mirror—a young boy with the eyes of a man that had seen too much. But if the man he’d been had seen so much, why was this shaking him so badly?</p><p> </p><p>Hadn’t he seen anything like it before?</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>Severus made it onto the train just before the doors shut, tugging his weightless trunk along behind him. He put it up and found Lily easily enough, although to his surprise she’d claimed a compartment with Potter et al. She would have hexed Potter to pieces for looking at her funny at the beginning of the year and now they were sniping at each other over a game of Exploding Snap while Black provided colorful commentary and Lupin, Pettigrew, and Alice passed around a bag of chocolate frogs to munch on while they watched the show.</p><p> </p><p>Lily took a breath to go on the offensive and saw Severus standing in the doorway. “Sev! Where’ve you been? We thought the train was going to leave without you!”</p><p> </p><p>“I wasn’t that late,” Severus objected. The train lurched into motion under his feet as though to prove him wrong and he almost fell into Lupin’s lap.</p><p> </p><p>Lupin patted his back in sympathy. “Come on, we saved you a seat,” he said.</p><p> </p><p>There was a time when those words would have made Severus wary, suspicious, wondering what they were planning or what the joke on him was. But now, he sat between Lupin and Lily with a hand of smoking cards, an open book forgotten on his lap, and a mouth full of chocolate, laughing at Lily and Potter’s proto-flirting and Black’s clumsy attempts to undermine it. Lucius’s gift was tucked in the waistline of the back of Severus’ Muggle blue jeans under his robes—he could feel it where it dug into the small of his back. Alice and Lupin were arguing about different types of candy, and Pettigrew was taking sly advantage of their distraction to get into their stash. He had chocolate smeared all around his mouth and looked as fat and happy as a pigeon in a roost.</p><p> </p><p>It might be winter, but all Severus could feel was warmth.</p><p> </p><p>He was eleven again, and his mother would be there to pick him up at the train station. He’d spend time with her and Lily and avoid his father, as usual, and if his Christmas wasn’t what it was for other people, that was all right.</p><p> </p><p>He’d gotten through all the other Christmases. He’d get through this one too.</p><p><br/>***</p><p> </p><p>Five hours later with the train just pulled up to the platform at King’s Cross Station, Severus was deeply regretting being so optimistic. The rest of his compartment were already out in the hall trying to find their trunks, but Severus stood frozen staring out the window, stomach turning in abject dread.</p><p> </p><p>His mother had come to pick him up, all right.</p><p> </p><p>But why was his father with her?</p><p> </p><p>Severus slammed the cap Lucius had given him over his head in a spasm of terror, took a moment to soothe his shaking hands, then went out into the hall to collect his trunk and pretend that everything was all right.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Play Date</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sirius stared out at the platform through the crush of students trying to get off the train and wondered if it was too early to claim sanctuary with the Potters. He shuffled along at a snail’s pace wedged within the throng of other students and their trunks, the knot in his gut growing tighter with every step closer he took toward abandoning the safety of the train.</p><p> </p><p>The family he’d left behind years ago was out there somewhere. His mother, like a glacier, cold and implacable, carving through anything in her path over years and years of relentless pressure. His father, a shut-in who spent his days layering protective charms onto Grimmauld Place and terrorizing Muggles who got too close to the property lines. And his brother, who had drunk so deeply of Pureblood ideology that he had drowned.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius had spent years pushing back against them and what they had tried to get him to believe, but all he had earned was their sneering, pitying disdain that he saw those of lesser blood as equals. Somehow it had been worse than flat-out derision. Like his parents kept thinking that if they humored him just a little longer, he’d finally come to his senses and embrace his inherent Pureblood superiority.</p><p> </p><p>He’d left for his sanity. And to keep from grinding his teeth to dust in frustration. No matter how he’d tried to provoke them with pictures of Muggle girls in bikinis on the walls of his bedroom or by wearing Muggle clothes or listening to Muggle music, because at least he would have felt justified in his cause in the face of their anger, they’d instead responded with cold disappointment and had always somehow managed to twist it around so he was the unreasonable one.</p><p> </p><p>And now he was going back.</p><p> </p><p>James pressed up beside him and grinned. “Ready to go home?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius bumped James’s offered fist with his own and managed a grin in return. “Nope.”</p><p> </p><p>James clapped him on the shoulder, gaze full of sympathy. “You know you can visit. Any day except Christmas.”</p><p> </p><p>As though his mother would ever let him, Sirius thought. James’s parents had championed the abolishment of blood purity requirements in inheritance law a few years back. Aloud he said, “Thanks.”</p><p> </p><p>The river of other bodies had finally shuffled them through the door to the top of the ramp. As they pushed their trunks in front of them, the damp heat that rose up from the train’s hissing track steamed James’s glasses. He grabbed Sirius’ sleeve so he didn’t stumble. Sirius couldn’t help the fondness that surged in his chest.</p><p> </p><p>“What do you say, when we get back I’ll beat you in chess.”</p><p> </p><p>James puffed up his chest. “As though you could. I’ve only ever lost to Remus—oh! Mum! Dad!” He lit up and pushed up onto his toes, waving wildly. “Hey, come on, they’ll want to meet you.” He pulled Sirius toward a rather elderly couple and Sirius got to spend the next few pleasant minutes around parents (even if they weren’t his own) who weren’t about to tear him a new one for daring to think for himself. The Potters had taken him in after he’d run away at sixteen and treated him no differently than James. That was the sort of people they were. Of course he knew they didn’t know him now, that the history between him and them had vanished through the Veil with all the rest, but that didn’t stop his little surge of envy watching James’s mother smooth James’s puffy hair down over his forehead. James wriggled in her grasp and complained.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius pulled back from James and his lovely, loving parents and made his excuses. His mother was already sure to be in a mood from being forced to be in proximity to half-bloods and—the horror—<em>Muggleborns</em> who dared not scrape and bow in her presence, and she’d be even worse if he made her wait too long. He only let himself give one longing look over his shoulder as he left them.</p><p> </p><p>The platform was a mess. Cats and owls ran amok, knots of tearful adieu-ing students didn’t seem to realize the new term started in two weeks, and luggage no one seemed to know what to do with trapped the unaware in a maze of wobbling stacks of trunks. Someone bumped Sirius from behind and Sirius revved up to say something biting, but when he turned he saw Snape, whose knuckles were white around the handles of his weightless trunk and whose expression wouldn’t have been out of place on a French aristocrat getting walked up to the guillotine.</p><p> </p><p>His short hair was also somehow black again and he’d picked up a dorky-looking newsboy cap somewhere. Funny. Sirius wouldn’t have pegged Snape as a hat person.</p><p> </p><p>“You all right?” he said. He snapped his fingers in front of Snape’s eyes when he didn’t respond at once.</p><p> </p><p>Snape seemed to jerk back to himself and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. The newsboy cap didn’t move an inch, Sirius noticed with faint interest. To his surprise, Snape didn’t seem inclined to tell him off at all.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Snape glanced at Sirius for a second, then Sirius followed his gaze toward a couple further down on the platform that hadn’t caught sight of them yet. They were holding hands and making lovey-dovey eyes at each other. Sirius felt another little twinge—then he got annoyed with himself. He wouldn’t be jealous of <em>Snape</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Your parents?” he asked since that seemed polite. Even though it was definitely unnecessary. Snape looked just like his mother.</p><p> </p><p>Hard yikes.</p><p> </p><p>“Yep,” Snape said, and Sirius wondered why his knuckles were going a little whiter. “Those are my parents.”</p><p> </p><p>“They really look like they love each other.”</p><p> </p><p>Snape pressed his lips together and breathed out hard. “They sure do, don’t they.” He started moving toward them. “See you next year, Black,” he threw over his shoulder. “Don’t choke on your leaf.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius decided to embrace the holiday spirit of goodwill toward his fellow man instead of flipping Snape off behind his back, but it was a near thing. He turned instead to the task of finding his own mother, which was harder than it would have been if she were as vocal with her opinions as her portrait. It seemed impossible, but Walburga was even more aggravating dead than alive.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, he caught sight of her in a severe dress of fitted dark lace and a long black coat, standing at an angle to the platform with her arms crossed over her chest and the pointed toe of her heel tapping in clear impatience. Sirius could admit that she was the one he got his stunning good looks from, except she liked to play hers up with blood-red lipstick and two fever-bright spots of blush high on her pale cheekbones. Combined with the done-up dark hair, the refined angles of her face, and the expression of haughty disdain as she surveyed those around her, she looked a bit like a vampire femme fatale from Muggle films. Sirius was cheered to think how hateful she would be to know that.</p><p> </p><p>“Hello, Mother,” he said as he approached, drawing out the words in resignation. He tucked the mandrake leaf into his cheek in sudden concern that she would somehow notice it.</p><p> </p><p>Walburga looked up and pursed her lips, then very deliberately resettled her beaded black clutch against her side. “We will speak at home,” she said, and strode off without another word toward the station’s Floo—a great series of fireplaces set into the far wall with a growing line of people in front of each.</p><p> </p><p><em>Well, fuck you too</em>, Sirius thought. <em>No “hello”, no “welcome home”, no “you are a disgrace to your bloodline”—wait, I’ve seen this before. That bit’s coming. Remind me why I came home at all?</em></p><p> </p><p>He followed to the Floo exit with his trunk. His mother tossed in a handful, said “Grimmauld Place,” in a cold, clear voice, and stepped through without so much as a glance to make sure he was following. Sirius could already feel a stress headache building behind his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>It had always been strange to him why his mother’s portrait had shouted all the time when his mother herself would rather dip her words in poison and slide them between his ribs when he was least expecting them. She believed strongly in the natural order of things—her world worked in terms of power and hierarchy. Everyone and everything below her was fair game and only there for her pleasure and convenience.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius thought the reason her portrait had screamed so much at the members of the Order was because she knew she was powerless to take advantage of those of lesser blood who were tromping through her home and working against every ideal she had ever held, and that thought drove her to madness.</p><p> </p><p>Even the reason that she took care of Kreacher wasn’t because she cared about his well-being, but because it amused her to see what depth of loyalty her little crumbs of kindness inspired in him.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius stepped out of the fireplace into Grimmauld Place’s dreary sitting room, which was only lit by the slanting lines of sunlight peeking in through the gaps in the shutters. They illuminated the dancing motes of dust in their path. He patted the ash off his shoulders and his mother finally deigned to look at him.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>“Are you quite pleased with yourself?” Her voice was now not only cold, but glacial, and as deep and dangerous as an uncharted cave system. Sirius pretended he didn’t feel a tremble down his spine.</p><p> </p><p>Screaming might have been his mother’s portrait’s style, but his mother had other, more subtle weapons. Although Sirius knew his Housemates had been expecting her to bombard Hogwarts with Howlers after he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor, she had sent just one to express her disappointment, using the low frightening voice that she was using now. That Howler had struck the fear of God into anyone who’d been close enough to overhear it. It had concluded with an ominous promise: <em>We will speak of this when you return.</em></p><p> </p><p>Sirius had spent all term pointedly not thinking about it.</p><p> </p><p>His mother drew herself up, looming over him in her heels. “You’ve disgraced us. Six hundred years of Blacks in Slytherin, and you let the Hat put you in Gryffindor with the Mudbloods and the traitors!” Her voice dropped and became even more deadly. “Have you no respect for your own blood?”</p><p> </p><p><em>There it is</em>, Sirius thought, the corners of his mouth beginning to curl up. He tried to smooth his face into an appropriately chastised expression, but it was hard when all he wanted to do was smirk and throw fuel on the fire. Old habits die hard.</p><p> </p><p>The door opened behind Sirius and a voice floated through the dim room. “Mother?”</p><p> </p><p><em>Ah</em>, Sirius thought. <em>I remember now why I came home</em>.</p><p> </p><p>For a completely unrelated reason, his stress headache also got worse.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Reggie,” he said, turning, swallowing hard against the mandrake leaf and the sudden drought in his throat. His heart did something funny when he saw him, still with the dark limpid eyes of easy childhood and the head of rumpled hair that hadn’t been conquered yet by gels and a legion of bespelled combs. They’d been friends once—two years wasn’t such a difference in age.</p><p> </p><p>The problem was that Regulus was just too trusting. He trusted their parents. He’d trusted the Dark Lord—would again, if Sirius didn’t do anything to stop him—and that decision would become his last. He’d trusted Sirius once too. Maybe Sirius could remind him of that.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius wanted nothing more than to burn Grimmauld Place down to the ground together with all the artefacts that leaked their dark magic into the air. Every minute he was in this house, he could feel their malevolence pressing harder against his skin. But if he wanted to help Regulus—or at least make Regulus understand that he would need to help himself—he had to stay here. It would be a game he’d never tried to play before. He had to convince his parents he agreed now with the ideology they’d been trying to stuff down his throat for years and at the same time convince Regulus to leave it.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius tried to pull himself together and slapped on his best rakish smile. “Did you miss me?”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus tilted his head and thought about it for a second. “Nope!”</p><p> </p><p>“Regulus,” their mother cut in. Her voice had thawed a little and Sirius tried to pretend it didn’t hurt. “Your brother and I are having a discussion.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Regulus nodded, eyes turned up in a smile that looked wrong on a nine-year-old’s face. “You’re in the House with dirty blood. Are you dirty now too?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius couldn’t come on too strong with his sudden change of heart or they might suspect something. Time to put to work the acting skills honed by years of picking up girls in bars. “Really, Reggie,” he scoffed, taking a seat on his trunk like he hadn’t a care in the world. He thought about doing his best to impersonate Lucius Malfoy, the most high-falutin person he knew, but decided that would be overkill. His palms went clammy, facing his mother—if <em>she</em> were an Animagus, she’d be a vulture—and he subtly pressed them on the legs of his trousers. “Do you really think anything can sully <em>Black</em> blood?”</p><p> </p><p>Well, he might have just sold his pride, his dignity, and his integrity, but at least he’d gotten to see that bewildered look on his mother’s face again before he died.</p><p> </p><p>His satisfaction withered as hers slowly bloomed.</p><p> </p><p>“Do you realize it now?” she said, voice no longer cold but soft as rain. Sirius tried to ignore how that made him ache. She stepped forward and stroked her fingers through his hair, skimming her sharp red nails over the shell of his ear. “Do you realize why we taught you as we did?”</p><p> </p><p>They had taught him that half-bloods and Mudbloods and Muggles were at his whim and that their talent, beauty, connections, and wealth rightfully belonged to him. His right as a Pureblood was to use them however he wished. That was the way it had been a thousand years ago when Purebloods were feudal lords and those of lesser blood were their vassals, beholden to their inborn power, and this was the way his parents thought it was still and should always be.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius put a smile on his face and leaned into her touch. “Yes, I think I’ve realized.”</p><p> </p><p>“Tell me,” she whispered. Her breath smelled like elderberry wine and he hoped his didn’t smell like mandrake.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius dropped his voice like he was telling her a secret. “They’re ridiculous. They think they know anything about our magic. There’s one stupid Mudblood who keeps going on about house elf liberty, of all things.” He snorted. “As though a house elf could ever want liberty. What for? So I think I understand what you and Father meant when you went on about Mudbloods. But they’re so amusing, really”</p><p> </p><p>“Are they? Is that why you Sorted Gryffindor?” She leaned closer. “To be <em>amused?</em>”</p><p> </p><p>“I was bored,” he said. “You’re always going on about Slytherin this and Slytherin that. And in Gryffindor, I’ve met people.”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Mudbloods</em>,” she sneered. Most wizards thought that was an insult toward Muggleborns, but Walburga used it the way it had been intended. To old Purebloods, any wizard who could trace ancestry to a Muggle was a Mudblood. It didn’t matter how far back the Muggle was in the line. Blood, once muddied, lost the right to ever again be called pure. Astonishingly, <em>just</em> discriminating against Muggleborns as unworthy had actually been a recent improvement in the matter.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius smirked and leaned back on the trunk, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Haven’t you and Father always said they need to learn their place? How can they do that if they aren’t shown?”</p><p> </p><p>The silence between them hung as heavy and still as the Veil itself, until her sharp intake of breath and her almost-reverent whisper broke it. “You do understand.”</p><p> </p><p>She cupped his face in cold hands and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. Thus anointed with her approval, Sirius’ heart rate slowed. She’d taken the bait. Time to press his advantage.</p><p> </p><p>“There’s one in particular—he’s out of the Prince line.” He said this idly, swinging his foot against his trunk. He felt rather than saw his mother bristle, then laugh.</p><p> </p><p>“The Prince line? You mean the half-blood brat from Raleigh’s Muggle-loving <em>daughter</em>?” She said daughter like she really meant a worse word and straightened up away from Sirius. He tried not to let his relief show. “Raleigh’s whole line went to the gutter the day he didn’t strike her down for daring to sully their blood.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s him,” Sirius said, mentally apologizing to Snape for being about to throw him to his mother’s tender mercies. For the greater good, and all that. “He’s terribly ugly, of course—must be the Muggle blood—but he’s rather intelligent. He’s friends with Lucius, actually.”</p><p> </p><p>“No Pureblood would be friends with a half-blood,” Walburga reprimanded. “Do you mean that Lucius is his patron?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius inwardly rolled his eyes but outwardly he shrugged. “I suppose. I see them together fairly often.”</p><p> </p><p>This piqued his mother’s interest. She’d been trying to wrangle a marriage contract between Lucius and Narcissa, the most beautiful and best-behaved of Sirius’ three cousins, for a few years now, and greatly respected Abraxas Malfoy as one of the bastions of the Pureblood cause. If Lucius deigned to notice a Mudblood, maybe the Mudblood in question had something to offer.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius barreled on before he could lose his nerve. “I want to invite him over.”</p><p> </p><p>“Lucius?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, Snape. The half-blood.”</p><p> </p><p>His mother’s eyes went as hard as flint. “Why?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to pretend he didn’t care very much about the outcome of this conversation. “He’s smart. He could be useful someday. And how are you supposed to teach Regulus how to manage them if he doesn’t know what they’re like?”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t want to meet a Mudblood,” Regulus piped up from where Sirius had almost forgotten about him. He was watching with all the removed interest of a spectator at a tennis match. Sirius’ headache got worse again.</p><p> </p><p>“Quiet, Regulus. Your brother has made a point.” His mother tapped her finger on her chin. “He’s intelligent?”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s Slughorn’s prize Potions student,” Sirius confirmed.</p><p> </p><p>She considered this, obviously weighing the advantages of having her thumb on such a stellar asset against the detriment of even acknowledging the existence of a boy with such dirty blood. A wizard with a Muggle parent was nearly as offensive to her as a full Muggleborn. “Perhaps not a bad idea, as long as it’s done carefully,” she finally said grudgingly. “Especially since his mother was a Prince. We can’t have him getting airs above his station.”</p><p> </p><p>Time to justify his friendship with James while she’d been softened by his sudden understanding of the way the world was supposed to work. “And there’s another Pureblood—James Potter. I think with a little convincing, I can get him to understand what’s wrong with what his parents think.”</p><p> </p><p>His mother snorted. “The Potters are insufferable do-gooders. There’s no chance.”</p><p> </p><p>“You’d be surprised,” Sirius said. “There’s nothing he likes better than to hex a Muggleborn.” One particular Muggleborn who liked to hex back, but hey, the truth was the truth.</p><p> </p><p>His mother was intrigued, but not convinced. Sirius had expected that. He’d keep trying.</p><p> </p><p>Regulus yawned loudly to bring their eyes back to him. The little prince couldn’t go for very long without being the center of attention. (Neither could Sirius, but that was different.) “Sirius, you should go take a bath,” he said in his sweetly insufferable rich boy whine. “Because you’re dirty, dirty, dirty.”</p><p> </p><p><em>You little brat</em>, Sirius thought. The pressure from his stress headache twinged behind his eyes. <em>Why do I even bother?</em></p><p> </p><p>Because he hadn’t bothered enough last time. And do-overs weren’t only for James.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>Severus stared at his father from across the table of the pub where they’d brought him, and his fish and chips stuck in his throat. He hadn’t been expecting anything good when he’d seen his father waiting on the platform with his mother, but he hadn’t thought it could be this bad.</p><p> </p><p>His father was sober.</p><p> </p><p>His father was sober and his mother was in love.</p><p> </p><p>Severus swallowed a little harder around his fish and chips, not even caring in the face of this catastrophe if his mandrake leaf went down with them. The tartar sauce caught on the back of his throat and stung his sinuses.</p><p> </p><p>Worse—his father was making apologies and promises.</p><p> </p><p>Worse still—his mother had taken them hook, line, and sinker.</p><p> </p><p>“I haven’t done well by you and your mother,” his father said, looking earnestly at Severus before glancing tenderly at Eileen. “That’s going to change. I’m not going to drink anymore.”</p><p> </p><p>“Right,” Severus said, and stared past them to the telly on the wall that was showing some silent game of cricket. The fish and chips wouldn’t go down no matter how hard he tried. He reached for the tall plastic glass in front of him and brought it to his lips, gulping such a large mouthful of water that it hurt to swallow.</p><p> </p><p>Eileen jumped in, sounding a little hurt at Severus’ lack of effluent praises at his father’s words. Severus tried not to look at how her hand was entwined with his father’s on top of the table. “He hasn’t had a drink since a month after you left for school,” she said, stroking the back of Tobias’ hand with her thumb. “And he’s fixed up the house, and he got promoted at his job. After this, we’re going out to get you new clothes. You look like you’ve grown.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus nodded and ate another chip. Or at least, he put it in his mouth and tried to chew.</p><p> </p><p>Had it always been so difficult to eat?</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t stop staring at their laced fingers.</p><p> </p><p>“I know you don’t believe me.” Tobias leaned forward, resting his elbow on the table, and Severus had no choice but to meet his eyes. “And I understand. But I promise—I’ll make it all up to you. Both of you. Things will be better now.”</p><p> </p><p>His eyes were dark and sincere, and looking into them gave Severus shivers of cold rage up and down his spine.</p><p> </p><p><em>Right</em>, he thought, doing his best to choke down his chips. <em>You mean it this time.</em></p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>Having been at Voldemort’s beck and call for years with the mark that had burned like acid under his skin, Severus was really put off by the idea of being summoned by anyone ever again. He was an angry, sardonic, resentful half-blood, not a dog. So it really said something that when Severus received a note from Walburga Black the morning after Christmas, all he could do was breathe out in relief, trying to loosen his near-permanently clenched jaw. Christmas had been that awful, what with his father being charming and attentive to him and his mother and his parents making gooey eyes at each other over his head at the dinner table. It was enough to make anyone sick, and Severus in particular had spent the last week soaking in a cold wash of lingering dread.</p><p> </p><p>In an elegant hand, the summons (as it was too strongly worded to be an invitation) said: <em>My elder son and heir Sirius Black has brought it to my attention that you are talented in magic. I choose to encourage such talent, especially as you are a half-blood. I would also like to improve my sons’ acquaintance with you. We expect you on the 27th of December at three in the afternoon. The Floo at Grimmauld Place will be left open in anticipation of your arrival.</em></p><p> </p><p>Someone else (Severus could guess who) had scrawled across the bottom of the missive in chicken-scratch cursive—<em>I convinced her you could be useful to our family so now she wants to judge you for herself. She believes in blood because she sees it as a shorthand for power. Even Purebloods need servants. :P Come help me and I’ll show you our library. SOS.</em></p><p> </p><p>Well, Black’s little addendum had answered Severus’ immediate question—why a notorious blood purist would condescend to have him in her home—but Severus continued to be amazed at the relative civility of the letter. He hadn’t been able to set foot in Grimmauld Place before without her portrait screeching hair-curling insults at him, and now she was inviting him over like he was almost an equal. Truly incredible.</p><p> </p><p>Severus crunched up the letter in his hand and went to find his mother, hoping that she might be out of his father’s company, rare as that was since he’d come home. His new clothes—not just new to him, but store-bought new, which had been a novel experience in itself—felt stiff and unfamiliar against his skin, and he touched the brim of the hat Lucius had given him to reassure himself.</p><p> </p><p>That had felt like the most unfair thing, actually, about the whole mess with his father suddenly deciding to do what he should have been doing all along. The train ride back, Severus had been quietly anticipating the moment when his mother would see his blue hair at the station and the way that she would cluck and worry over him in concern and exasperation. He was eleven and that was his privilege. But his father had been there, and the subsequent revelations about his sobriety and all those empty promises that Eileen was clinging to like an icon had meant that Severus hadn’t told her about his hair at all, he felt so betrayed. As far as either of his parents knew, the hat was just a gift from a friend and he loved it so much he never ever took it off. Neither had the slightest suspicion anything was amiss.</p><p> </p><p>Not that Eileen had been too concerned with what Severus was and wasn’t doing lately.</p><p> </p><p>She was in <em>love</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Severus tried to ignore the sour taste the thought put in his mouth and found his mother in the kitchen washing dishes, thin hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She was humming to herself and scratched the back of her leg with her other foot, which was bare despite the chill seeping up through the cracks in the splintery wooden floors. Tobias had promised to fix that, too. Severus wasn’t holding his breath. But Eileen believed it, and the reminder sent a pulse of resentment all the way through to Severus’ fingertips.</p><p> </p><p>“Mum,” he said, and she paused at the sink and turned, wiping her sudsy hands on her new yellow apron. Another gift from Tobias.</p><p> </p><p>She smiled at him. “There you are. Your father’s at the store. Do you want lunch?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, thanks,” he said, and let go of a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “One of my classmates invited me over tomorrow.” He waved the crumpled letter at her, then wished he hadn’t. If she read it, he was sure she would be less than pleased both by the tone of Walburga’s message and Black’s sarcastic little note. Maybe the indignation would be enough to knock her out of her self-conceived happy bubble.</p><p> </p><p>But Eileen didn’t seem inclined to want the letter. She paused, then gave him another smile and turned back to the sink, humming again. “Of course you can go. Who is it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Sirius Black,” Severus said, and waited for the fallout. He put the letter on the counter.</p><p> </p><p>Eileen’s shoulders stiffened and she turned back to face him, no longer smiling. “Absolutely not.”</p><p> </p><p>“He got Sorted into Gryffindor,” Severus said. “He’s nice. We’re friends.” He had to force the words out through his teeth, but to all appearances, he and Black were friends. People didn’t usually have mortal enemies turned reluctant allies at eleven, and there had been a lot of conspiring in corridors between the two of them.</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t want you near that family,” Eileen said, fingers white-knuckled around a dish towel, and Severus wondered with frustration where such iron resolve had been when his father had come crawling back. “They’re blood purists and you’re a half-blood. They want to use you, not be friends with you.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus bit back without thinking. “You should have thought of that, shouldn’t you.”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen pulled away. “What?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus knew this couldn’t end well, but all the fury that he had been pressing down bubbled up and went straight to his head, as dizzying as any liquor. “You should have thought of that before you got us stuck with <em>him</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen’s hurt shone through her eyes. “Why would you say that about your father? He’s a good man—”</p><p> </p><p>“No, he’s a drunk who likes to use you as a punching bag.” Severus spit out the words and his vision blurred from all his pent-up rage and frustration. “Why won’t you just <em>leave</em> him?”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen went on the defensive. “You be quiet,” she hissed back, fingers twisting the dish cloth into a rope, wringing it between her hands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus couldn’t stop his indignant laugh. “He always does this. He says everything—he makes such pretty promises. But it never lasts, you know it never does. He’ll come home drunk and hit you again, and you’ll keep making excuses for him—”</p><p> </p><p>“He won’t,” Eileen snapped, finally as angry as Severus. “He loves me, he’s changed. He means it this time—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus choked on his fury. “Can you even hear yourself?”</p><p> </p><p>Eileen shoved the letter at Severus. “It’s none of your business,” she said, voice as cold as the blue at the innermost cone of a flame. “You want to go see how Purebloods live? You want to pretend you’re not what you are? Fine. Don’t come crying to me when they’re cruel.”</p><p> </p><p>She pointedly put her back to him and returned to the dishes, scrubbing them with excessive force, bashing the cutlery down onto the counter. Severus couldn’t see straight, he was so angry, and stamped up the stairs to his room, where he slammed the door shut so hard the frame shuddered.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t go down the rest of the day, not even for dinner, and his mother didn’t call for him. He pretended to be asleep when his father came into the room, hiding his revulsion with slow even breaths to fool the man standing over him. Later that night, he ignored his mother’s quavering appeal to him through the door and put the pillow over his head until he heard her footsteps finally retreat.</p><p> </p><p>Severus was glad to go visit Black, really.</p><p> </p><p>Anywhere was better than here.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>Sirius glanced at the ancient grandfather clock that stood behind one of the overstuffed leather library chairs and aimlessly turned the page of the Quidditch magazine on his lap. Just under an hour to go before Snape got here—if he came at all. Sirius couldn’t honestly blame him if he didn’t, although it would make things more difficult for both of them later in regards with justifying their association to Walburga. She wouldn’t be happy if her summons to a measly half-blood were ignored without any reply, no matter how rude she’d been first.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius would have rather been outside but a glance through the heavy warped panes of the ancient window and the thick snow that fell beyond dissuaded him. He leaned back on the window seat and gave himself a minute to stare at the opposite wall and think.</p><p> </p><p>It was too dangerous for him and Snape to talk about anything even remotely important. The house-elves would spy on them and report back to Walburga if they heard anything—they had done so all through Sirius’ childhood and adolescence, although he hadn’t realized it until he’d been nearly sixteen. It had been one of the last straws before he’d run away to the Potters’.</p><p> </p><p>Snape surely knew how paranoid Purebloods could be and he was paranoid enough to rival any of them, so Sirius thought they were safe on that regard. But the real objective of this mission was to make Regulus question whether half-bloods were everything his parents had told him they had to be. Sirius hadn’t explicitly told this to Snape, so now he had to cross his fingers and hope that Snape’s natural good nature and abundant charm would shine through and save the day.</p><p> </p><p>Who was he kidding, they were screwed.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius wished with all his heart he could have argued his mother into letting Regulus meet Remus instead. Or hell, even Evans. But no, Sirius had to be forced to rely on the one half-blood whose lack of propriety was only rivaled by his lack of people skills. What had he done to deserve this? Was this karma for bullying Snape in his past life?</p><p> </p><p>“That’s mine,” a voice said, snapping Sirius out of his reverie, and Sirius sighed and held out the magazine in one hand.</p><p> </p><p>“Nice to see you too, Reggie.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus scowled and snatched it from him, examining the corners for any damage. Sirius felt rather affronted. You dog-ear <em>one</em> magazine and suddenly no one ever trusts you again.</p><p> </p><p>Apparently satisfied that his property hadn’t suffered at Sirius’ hands, Regulus returned his attention to him and scowled harder. “You don’t even like Quidditch.”</p><p> </p><p>This was not, in fact, true. Sirius liked Quidditch a great deal, mostly because he got to sit in the stands with a bunch of other people in scarlet and gold and scream without being told to shut up and throw popcorn at the backs of other people’s heads.</p><p> </p><p>Playing Quidditch was another matter. Sirius could ride a broom well enough, and he wasn’t afraid of heights or anything (what could be more embarrassing than that, honestly?), but flying had never excited him like it had James, who would have lived on a broom if he could. Add to that the frankly appalling early hours that the Quidditch team practiced in the morning before classes, and Sirius’ interest in joining the Gryffindor Quidditch team had shriveled before it had even taken root.</p><p> </p><p>He shrugged and stretched, standing up from the window seat and going toward the door. “I’m bored. Quidditch is better than nothing.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus followed him, magazine clutched to his chest. “Isn’t your dirty friend coming soon?”</p><p> </p><p>“Not soon enough,” Sirius muttered.</p><p> </p><p>“I heard Mother talking to Father,” Regulus said, voice loud enough to cut through the muttering of the ancestral portraits hung on the walls of the hallway. They shut up and gave him mean looks for interrupting them, but he ignored them and went on. “Mother said you had better not let him wander around the house by himself because something might eat him and she just had the carpets cleaned.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius scoffed. “Nothing in this house eats people. Except the boggart in the piano bench if you’re stupid, and some of the books in the library.” He paused for a moment. “What did Father say?”</p><p> </p><p>“He laughed and said everything in this house has the good taste not to eat a half-blood.” Regulus scuffed the toe of his shoe on the carpet and his voice wobbled. “Doesn’t that mean they’d rather eat us?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius sighed. Regulus was such a scaredy-cat. “Father was just joking.” An unpleasant thought occurred to him. “Do you think she was talking about the wards?”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus shrugged, which was answer enough for Sirius. He headed for his father’s study, Regulus still tagging along behind.</p><p> </p><p>The heavy door was open when they got there, unusual enough as to suggest that Walburga was inside as well. Sirius poked his head through and, not receiving an immediate shouted order to get out, pushed the door open further and went in. Regulus lingered just outside, still too afraid of their father’s wrath to defy him.</p><p> </p><p>Walburga and Orion were at the far end of the room. Orion was seated at his massive desk of polished mahogany, doing something with the piles of papers and arcane materials strewn about, and Walburga stood over him, arms crossed and mouth pulled down in a frown.</p><p> </p><p>That was a good visual representation of the dynamic of their marriage, Sirius thought. Orion might be the head of the family on paper, but his wife held all the real power, authority, and force of personality between the two of them. Her husband hardly left his study, only sometimes appearing for meals, and he left the house even less than that, preferring to hole up in his private study and research curses and wards against Muggles, Mudbloods, and magical creatures.</p><p> </p><p>When Sirius had been shut up in Grimmauld Place as a wanted fugitive, some days all he could think about was how, even just by happenstance, he’d turned into his father a little, and then he’d laugh and laugh and get drunk and destroy some family heirlooms to make himself feel better.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius shook off the memory and came closer, plastering an ingratiating smile on his face. “Mother,” he said, and Orion looked up with thunder on his face.</p><p> </p><p>“Why are you here? I didn’t give you permission to come in.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius and Walburga both ignored him. Sirius spoke first. “Mother, Regulus told me what you said about Snape getting eaten and—have you taken the wards against half-bloods down? It will be terribly embarrassing if he dies under our care.”</p><p> </p><p>Walburga smiled in what appeared to be genuine pleasure at his words. It made Sirius’ skin crawl. “Darling, don’t worry. I’ve just been making sure your father knows we can’t afford any…accidents…today.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’d be doing us all a favor,” Orion sneered, throwing some papers down onto his desk. “Rid the world of another filthy half-blood, who’d even notice he was gone?”</p><p> </p><p>“If you still think that, husband,” Walburga said, sweet as absinthe, “put the wards back up, and you can be the one to go to court and explain your reasoning to the Wizengamot. You’d get at least a quarter of the votes in your favor, I’m sure.”</p><p> </p><p>This shut Orion up. Not because he was scared of murder charges, but because Sirius could count on both hands the number of times he’d ever seen his father leave the house. He’d rather suffer a half-blood in his sacred abode than be forced to go outside with no assurance of being allowed back.</p><p> </p><p>Purebloods priorities at their finest, right there.</p><p> </p><p>“Thank you, Mother,” Sirius said, glancing at the clock on the wall. Half an hour to go, and hopefully he could keep Snape alive the whole time he was over here too. He went back to Regulus, who still hadn’t dared to come in.</p><p> </p><p>Not for the first time, Sirius wondered what people with normal families worried about.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>Not for the first time, Severus wondered what people with normal families worried about. He’d gone over to see Lily that morning, partly just to visit and partly to let her know that if he suddenly died or disappeared, one of the Blacks had done it, but he’d been obliged to stay longer because the little white kitten her parents had given her for Hogwarts had disappeared and she was in the midst of a deep bereavement. Severus had done his best to console her, but there were only so many comforts one could give, especially with Petunia stepping through the room at inopportune moments when her parents couldn’t hear and snidely saying things like, “I bet he got hit by a car,” or “We sure have a lot of foxes around here lately.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus had felt bad about going, but at the same time he’d never been more relieved to leave Lily to her parents’ tender sympathies and Petunia’s much less tender assaults. Now he stood in front of the Floo with a pinch of powder in his fingers while his mother hovered behind him and his father watched and tried to make painfully stilted conversation about how the Floo system worked. Eileen didn’t know enough about the technical particulars to tell him, and although Severus did, he didn’t feel willing to talk any more with the man than he had to.</p><p> </p><p>“If you feel uncomfortable or unsafe for any reason, come home,” Eileen told him, fretting with the collar of his shirt. She still couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and Severus didn’t particularly want to meet hers.</p><p> </p><p>“It’ll be fine,” Severus said, brushing her off. He pulled the brim of his hat further down over his eyes. “They can’t do anything to me.”</p><p> </p><p>This did not reassure his mother (his father didn’t look as though he was quite following the conversation), and the clock struck three. Severus threw the powder into the fireplace and stepped through to Grimmauld Place, ignoring the quiver of nerves in his stomach. What he had said to his mother had been true—they couldn’t do anything to him. Not today. People would notice if he went missing today.</p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t like there was anything to stop the Blacks (or any other Pureblood family, for that matter) from biding their time if they really felt like they needed to get rid of him in an inconspicuous manner, but for now Severus felt reasonably assured of his safety.</p><p> </p><p>It figured, he thought dourly, stepping through the Floo to the other side. The first time he’d ever gone over to the house of another schoolmate who wasn’t Lily or a Death Eater, and he was busy calculating how likely he was to make it out with all four limbs attached. He would maintain until the day he died that things like this were why he had blanket permission to be bitter.</p><p> </p><p>Black was there to greet him, he saw. More precisely, three Blacks were there to greet him, and Severus bit back a reflexive sigh as he pieced together why he’d been invited over so suddenly when they hadn’t talked about it before break. Stupid Black was going to use Severus either to draw fire from his mother, or maybe to rehabilitate Regulus, and Severus consoled himself with how much he could make Black suffer later from putting him into this position.</p><p> </p><p>But here was still better than his home had been so Severus played the part of the unsure half-blood raised around Muggles. “Hello,” he said, pretending not to notice the wisps of dark magic caressing his skin like the hands of a lover. It beckoned, seduced, offered the promise of sweetly forbidden power. Maybe it was because Severus been around the Dark Lord so much, but he’d never been able to shake either the ability to sense it nor the shivers of disgust that ran down his back at the touch.</p><p> </p><p>Walburga advanced and Severus held his ground. Purebloods, like sharks, would attack if they smelled blood in the water. “Welcome,” she said, and Severus still couldn’t believe she wasn’t screaming slurs at him. He wondered if she’d like to and was just better at acting than he’d given her credit for. “I am pleased to see that you came.”</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks for inviting me,” Severus lied. He glanced at the other boy in the room and Black took the hint.</p><p> </p><p>“This is my brother, Regulus,” he said, wrapping his arm around Regulus’ shoulders. Regulus shrugged him off, but Black didn’t seem to mind. “Reggie, this is Snape.”</p><p> </p><p>“You’re a half-blood,” Regulus said, in a voice that communicated simultaneous distaste and curiosity, eying Severus like he was some exotic zoo animal his mother had allowed into the house to tromp on the carpets.</p><p> </p><p><em>You haven’t changed at all</em>, Severus thought. They might have run in the same Death Eater circles, but the one time Regulus had ever talked to him had been to call him a filthy half-breed to his face. He had only backed down when the Dark Lord had laughed and chastised him that Severus was useful despite that. But Regulus’ reaction did make Severus wonder how much he’d ever been let out of the house, if the fact of Severus being a half-blood was such a novelty.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, my mother’s a witch,” he responded, glancing at Walburga to see if she’d visibly grit her teeth or draw her wand on him at the reminder. But Walburga smiled as though she weren’t bothered at all and ushered him to one of the couches. As soon as he sat, a house-elf wearing the remains of someone’s frilly nightgown was at his elbow with a delicate porcelain cup of steaming tea and a tray of little cucumber sandwiches that had the crusts cut off.</p><p> </p><p>Severus took the cup, relieved it was hot enough that he had an excuse not to drink it right away. Just in case it was poisoned. Even though it probably wasn’t poisoned. Black sat on the other end of the couch, a cushion between them, and his mother and brother sat in armchairs opposite.</p><p> </p><p>Walburga sipped her own tea. “Severus, was it? And your mother’s a witch? Were you raised in a wizarding village?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, we live in a Muggle town. It’s where my father’s job is.” The reminder stirred the embers of Severus’ resentment toward his parents. He could have been raised among magic, if his mother had been more insistent. Instead he’d been dropped at eleven into a culture he’d only ever seen in glimpses on weekends and holidays, and heard of in children’s books after the children around him had grown too old for such things.</p><p> </p><p>Severus raised the cup to his lips to change his train of thought, thinking a fast Hail Mary to himself just in case it was actually poisoned. Beside him, Black took a handful of little sandwiches and popped one into his mouth whole, chewing loudly as he lounged against the sofa. Even Black couldn’t sit so nonchalantly if he knew the person next to him was about to meet an inglorious end, which relieved Severus to some extent.</p><p> </p><p>Severus didn’t die from the tea. He took it as a win considering the week he’d been having.</p><p> </p><p>Walburga kept grilling Severus about his background—what his father did, what sort of education he’d had before Hogwarts, his inclusion in Slughorn’s club, the extent of his relationship with Lucius. Severus answered vaguely as a rule, told parts of the truth when he couldn’t avoid it, and lied through his teeth with the ease of long practice. He was gratified by Black’s impressed look at his verbal subterfuge, although he wasn’t doing it for either his or Black’s amusement. The less Walburga knew about him, the better he’d feel.</p><p> </p><p>The subject Severus had been prepared to dance around, though, was the one Walburga didn’t bring up. He’d expected her to ask after his mother and disguise her sneering revulsion as concern for the fallen Pureblood who had married a Muggle, but…she didn’t. When Severus brought Eileen into the conversation, curious, Walburga smoothly changed the subject and Severus was left wondering.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe the thought of a Pureblood marrying a Muggle was so disgusting to her that she chose not to acknowledge it. Severus shrugged internally. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d run into that particular mindset, but that just made it stranger that she’d let Black talk her into this weird acquaintance at all.</p><p> </p><p>The questions seemed to go on forever, but finally Black stretched like a cat across the arm of the sofa, a half-full cup of tea in one hand and a pile of sandwiches still in the other. “Are you going to talk to him all day, Mother? I promised him I’d show him the library if he came over. Look, you’ve put Reggie to sleep.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus was indeed dozing in his armchair, and at Black’s words he snorted awake and spilled tea across the knees of his trousers and the rug at his feet.</p><p> </p><p>“Really, Regulus,” Walburga chided. “Go with your brother and show Severus the library.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus prickled when she used his first name. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, really—there wasn’t much else she could use to address him in polite company, and it’d have been stranger if she’d called him by his surname, but it felt—possessive. Condescending, like she had already earmarked him in her mind as someone to serve her the way Black had suggested in the letter. He was glad to leave her presence, even if it meant he had to be near a Regulus who was still grumpy from being woken from his nap.</p><p> </p><p>“This is the library,” Black announced, throwing open a pair of French doors that had panels of ornate stained glass down their length. Severus hadn’t seen them before. He hadn’t remembered there being any doors to the library in Grimmauld Place at all, actually, and as he leaned forward to examine the vibrantly colored scenes he realized why.</p><p> </p><p>All the panels were depictions of violence against Muggles. In one, Muggles ran from a dragon rampaging through a village, and as Severus watched, it swept its great head around and breathed out a gout of blue fire. The villagers disappeared into ash. More villagers came into the picture running for their own lives, and they died in the same way. In another panel, a group of wizards turned Muggles into animals, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the wizards weren’t laughing and the Muggles weren’t begging them to stop whenever they were made human again. But the worst was a scene of a wizard flaying a Muggle, his wand held with easy competence. The wizard had the gall to wave when he realized Severus was watching. His victim writhed and twisted against the bloody post he was strapped to.</p><p> </p><p>“Snape, are you coming?” Black said, ahead of him. He turned and saw what Severus was looking at, and arched eyebrows of alarm were the only warning Severus got before Black grabbed his arm and hustled him away. “Don’t look at those,” he whispered. “I forgot they were still here.”</p><p> </p><p>“Interesting choice of decoration,” Severus whispered back, throat dry. It took a lot to shake him nowadays, but that was a visceral reminder how Voldemort had been able to come to power in the first place—that was what he had promised to revive.</p><p> </p><p>“Family heirloom. If it makes you feel any better, they’re more to my father’s taste than my mother’s.” Black tugged him toward where Regulus was standing, impatient, in front of a tower of books. “I blasted them to pieces as soon as I came back.” He raised his voice a little so Regulus could hear. “Really, Snape. Don’t be so squeamish.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook his head and breathed out hard, and pulled his arm away from Black. Regulus was looking at him now, seeming surprised.</p><p> </p><p>“What?” Severus said, more sharply than he meant to.</p><p> </p><p>Regulus opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. “Nothing.”</p><p> </p><p>Black changed the subject by revealing a secret passage behind a tapestry and for a while all three of them were able to indulge their youthful impulse to go exploring behind the walls, pressing between spars of wood and squeezing through impossibly tight corners. The walls had transparent spelled windows at eye level where they could look through to the rooms without being seen themselves. Not out of the ordinary for a Pureblood family, although Severus assumed Black had meant to show him how little privacy they were assured at any moment.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t know your house had these,” Severus commented, ducking under a low curtain of spiderwebs. The air in these little corridors was damp and tasted faintly of mold. Did the house-elves not clean back here?</p><p> </p><p>“They’re for the elves,” Regulus said, bored. “That’s why they’re so small.”</p><p> </p><p>So Walburga used the elves to spy on people in her house. Good to know.</p><p> </p><p>“Not all of them,” Black said, grunting with the effort it took to get past a narrow spot. “Some of them go to the basement and the attic, and one goes all the way to the edge of the property.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus thought if Black was so free with sharing such information in front of Regulus it was likely that there were more secret tunnels that weren’t being mentioned on purpose. “What are they for?”</p><p> </p><p>Black paused, having decided to clamber over the narrow spot instead of squeeze past it, and his voice echoed back through the tunnel. “Escape routes. Hiding from Aurors, burying bodies. You know, normal stuff.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus spat out cobwebs and forced himself through the gap after Black, and Regulus followed behind without saying much to either of them.</p><p> </p><p>After a while, they heard a clock chiming through the walls and Black decreed they’d spent enough time in the tunnels. He fumbled with a latch above his head and finally managed to push it up, standing on the very tips of his toes. “Give me a boost,” he ordered, and after some cajoling Severus rolled his eyes and gave Black his cupped hands to stand on. Regulus did the same, and together they were able to push him up far enough that he could pull himself up over the lip of the trap door. “Come on, Reggie.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus eyed Severus suspiciously but let him give him a lift up to Black’s dangling hands. Black hauled him up the rest of the way and looked down at Severus. “Do you think you can jump for it?”</p><p> </p><p>“We’ll see,” Severus muttered, and backed up a few steps. Black caught him by the elbows and Regulus seized the back of his shirt, and together, they were able to hoist him far enough that he was able to get up the rest of the way by himself.</p><p> </p><p>They collapsed on the floor, panting, and Severus looked around. It seemed like they were in some sort of closet with long fur coats and—was that dragonskin? That was very illegal, and judging from the whiff of dark magic Severus got off it, for more than one reason to boot. Severus pushed the trapdoor shut and opened the closet door for some light. It swung open to reveal an unused bedroom. Apparently they’d gone up a floor somehow without him realizing.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ve noticed this before,” Black panted from where he was sprawled on top of a protesting Regulus, “but your hat doesn’t move at all. Did you glue it to your head or something?”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus dislodged Black with a mighty grunt of exertion and sat upright, dirt smudged all along his face. “Why are you wearing that ugly thing anyway?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus pulled it off and Regulus’ mouth popped open in surprise. “It’s a secret,” he said, and stuck it back down. He was somewhat gratified by Regulus’ reaction.</p><p> </p><p>“That’s neat,” Black said, still on the floor. “Where’d you get it from?”</p><p> </p><p>“Lucius.”</p><p> </p><p>“I guess you weren’t lying when you said he hated it.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus exploded like only a nine-year-old could. “Your hair is blue!” He lunged at Severus and yanked his hat off, staring hard at the resulting color that Severus thankfully couldn’t see himself. “Was it always blue? Do Muggles have blue hair? Why do you pretend it’s black? How come it didn’t look blue under the hat?”</p><p> </p><p>Black laughed. “He got hit with a wayward jinx a few months ago. Pretty weird, huh?”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus nodded furiously, and for just a moment Severus could see that he was still really a child. He stuffed the hat down onto his own head. “Did my hair change? Can you make it blue?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, the charm on the hat only makes it look black. And nobody’s been able to figure out why the hex went bad,” Severus said, taking his hat back from Regulus, who ceded it reluctantly. “Your brother was walking around bald for a few weeks trying to get his hair red.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus snorted and Black sulked. “It would have worked if Pomfrey weren’t such a spoilsport,” he muttered.</p><p> </p><p>A house-elf popped into existence a few feet away from them and they all jumped. It looked like a different one than the one that had served them tea earlier. Severus wondered what had happened to them all for Kreacher to be the only one left.</p><p> </p><p>“Please excuse,” she said in a tiny voice, and bowed. “Mistress wishes to know if Severus stays for dinner.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ knee-jerk reaction was no, but a few more hours in this house wouldn’t kill him. Probably. “I need to tell my mum,” he said to the elf, who nodded.</p><p> </p><p>“Tilly will bring paper.”</p><p> </p><p>She took his note and disappeared again, but not before looking them over and clucking under her breath at how dirty the three of them were. A wave of house-elf magic later and they no longer looked like they’d all crawled out of the walls. Regulus nodded to the elf in thanks and Severus couldn’t stop his eyebrows from shooting up.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Reggie,” Black said. <em>He</em> hadn’t acknowledged the elf at all. As was proper of a Pureblood wizard. “I bet Snape would love to see your Quidditch figurines.”</p><p> </p><p>There was little Severus would have liked less, but Regulus lit up and practically tore his sleeve off dragging him to his room, where he babbled about teams and Seekers and pitches until Severus could barely pretend to be interested anymore at all.</p><p> </p><p>“You really want to stay for dinner,” Black said under his breath. He picked up one of Regulus’ signed Quaffles and rolled it around his palms.</p><p> </p><p>“I want to see what endangered magical creature you’ll be serving,” Severus murmured back.</p><p> </p><p>“Ha,” Black smiled. “We don’t waste the good stuff on Mudbloods.”</p><p> </p><p>Regulus saw Black holding his Quaffle and squawked in alarm. “Don’t touch that!”</p><p> </p><p>Black let him have it and held his hands up innocently. “You pop <em>one</em> Quaffle and suddenly no one ever trusts you again,” he said to Severus, who shot Regulus a commiserating look.</p><p> </p><p>Dinner, when it came to it, was somewhat unremarkable, if not deeply uncomfortable. Black’s father pointedly ignored Severus’ existence to the extent of talking over him, Walburga tried to embarrass him with leading questions about his Muggle father, and Black and Regulus chimed in with their own opinions and argued over elbow space on the tabletop until a look from their mother stopped them cold. Severus had, however, attended worse dinners hosted by the Dark Lord (and wasn’t that a peculiar thought), so he was able to maintain his composure. And if nothing else, he knew the right way to use his knife and fork.</p><p> </p><p>The Dark Lord had been funny about little things like that. He could torture a Muggle to death without batting an eye, but God help you if you used the wrong fork for your salad.</p><p> </p><p>Severus couldn’t say he wasn’t relieved when he stood in front of the Floo, waiting for Walburga to take down the wards so he could get through it again. Regulus had disappeared sometime after dinner so now it was only him and Black waiting together in the sitting room.</p><p> </p><p>“So…that’s my family,” Black said when it seemed the silence between them had stretched long enough.</p><p> </p><p>Severus nodded and asked a question he’d never cared enough to wonder about before. “How’d you get Sorted into Gryffindor anyway?” He moved the mandrake leaf around in his mouth, glad he hadn’t swallowed it during dinner. There’d been a close call during dessert.</p><p> </p><p>Black paused and leaned a little closer. “You want to hear a secret?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why not?” Severus sighed, about eighty percent certain that Black’s next words were going to be flippant.</p><p> </p><p>Black winked. “It’s because I look terrible in green.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ha ha,” Severus deadpanned, and then Walburga came back into the room to let Severus know the Floo was open. He mouthed all the appropriate niceties and bolted in as unhurried a manner as he could manage.</p><p> </p><p>The first time he’d ever been to another schoolmate’s house that wasn’t Lily or a Death Eater, and he’d made it out alive and intact.</p><p> </p><p>Huzzah.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>After Snape left, Sirius retreated to his room and flopped on his bed. That had gone better than he had expected, since Regulus had actually been curious about Snape following the blue hair revelation. His mother had pronounced herself satisfied that Snape could be molded into a useful tool, and his father had locked himself in his study in a fit of pique that he’d had to sit at the same table as a half-blood.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius tilted his head up against the duvet and sighed.</p><p> </p><p>It was true that he looked terrible in green. Or at least Slytherin green. It made him look sickly. But the real reason he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor niggled at the back of his mind, especially since it had happened twice independently. This body had been Sorted before Sirius had woken up from falling, after all.</p><p> </p><p>He hadn’t had any strong moral convictions about Houses and blood status—he had been eleven. Blood purity had been something his parents had seethed about over the dinner table, not something he’d really understood the implications of. But he hadn’t gotten along well with his family, even then. Maybe it was just because he was a contrary sort of person by nature. He liked to do the opposite of what people expected of him, but he hadn’t ever had any honest thoughts about whether Muggles deserved subjugation. He had just resisted it because his parents had wanted him to embrace it.</p><p> </p><p>Then he’d met James on the train, and James had carried him into such an enthusiastic discussion about nothing (even though Sirius knew who he was and that he was supposed to despise him) that he wanted to know more. But James was going to be Sorted into Gryffindor and Sirius knew he couldn’t follow.</p><p> </p><p>When it was his turn the Hat had looked at him and whispered in his ear. <em>Now where should I put you?</em></p><p> </p><p><em>Not Slytherin</em>, Sirius had thought hard at it. <em>Not Slytherin.</em></p><p> </p><p>Sirius didn’t care much for books, but Ravenclaw would still have been all right, and even Hufflepuff might not have been so bad, despite its reputation as the Hogwarts catch-all House, but the main draws were that they weren’t Slytherin. There was a desperate longing in Sirius’ soul to do something, anything, and break free from his stuffy prison of a life.</p><p> </p><p><em>Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff</em>, he’d thought to the Hat. Not begging, because he wouldn’t beg, but…insistent. <em>Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. Please. Not Slytherin.</em></p><p> </p><p>The Hat had seemed to look sideways at him, flicking though his memories like the laminated pages of a Muggle photo album. Sirius had squirmed under such close scrutiny, but finally it seemed to have made a decision.</p><p> </p><p><em>You’re braver than you think</em>, it had said, and called out Gryffindor at once.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p> </p><p>After his little foray into Black territory, the rest of Severus’ break passed uneventfully. His father hadn’t gotten the hint that Severus wanted nothing to do with him and his mother hadn’t seemed to want to bring Severus’ attitude toward him up after the fight they’d had, so Severus spent a larger amount of time than usual in Lily’s house, dodging Petunia and helping Lily make “lost cat” posters.</p><p> </p><p>When his parents took him to Platform 9 ¾ a few days into the new year, Severus stood stiffly in his mother’s embrace and resentfully in his father’s. His trunk was full of new clothes from Christmas and his stomach was full of knots, and his mother still wouldn’t meet his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>She tried to kiss his forehead, but with his hat in the way she had to settle for his cheek. “Have a good semester,” she said, and let go of Severus to grab his father’s hand.</p><p> </p><p>Tobias gave Severus a long look. “I know you don’t trust me,” he said, quiet. He didn’t seem to have any trouble meeting Severus’ eyes. “When you get home for the summer, I’m going to be the father I should have been to you.” He clapped Severus on the shoulder. “Things won’t ever go back to the way they were. I promise.”</p><p> </p><p><em>If only your promises meant something</em>, Severus thought.</p><p> </p><p>The train whistled and Severus was glad to escape, although his parents wouldn’t let him go quite so easily. When he finally slid into his seat in the compartment Lily and the other Gryffindors had claimed, even the promise of candy and another ferocious marathon of Exploding Snap held little appeal. He resisted everyone’s attempts to pull him into the game and spent the ride tucked in a book, although when they arrived he couldn’t have said with any certainty what he’d been reading about.</p><p> </p><p>Lucius cornered him in the hall after dinner and asked anxiously, “Did it work?” He seemed relieved seeing the hat still on Severus’ head.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m still alive,” Severus confirmed, thinking about Walburga Black, but without meaning to his mouth turned down at the corners, remembering the mess about his parents he’d met with and left behind. He blurghed it all to Lucius, who took it in stride and didn’t seem to realize that wasn’t even close to how a family should be.</p><p> </p><p>“Fathers are…complicated,” Lucius said, looking at the ceiling, pretending not to see Severus’ unhappy face.</p><p> </p><p>Severus sniffled and tucked his hands into his pockets, tugged the brim of his hat down over his eyes. “Yeah, they are.”</p><p> </p><p>He knew Lucius would understand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Hidden Rooms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sirius stared at the flickering flame of the sconce. The excitement in his belly trembled along with it.</p><p> </p><p>He hadn’t been expecting to find more secret passages when he’d come back to Hogwarts. He’d thought he and James and Remus and Peter had found them all already, back in the days of his genuine youth. Some of the passages went to Hogsmeade and some went to other parts of the castle, and some didn’t go anywhere but only led in a circle until you realized you were being duped and blasted your way out. They’d found some by mistake and some by word of mouth, but very few had they found by deliberately looking. It was purely up to chance and where the castle would deign to allow them to go.</p><p> </p><p>With that in mind, Sirius hadn’t been expecting to discover anything new when he’d started revisiting the passages that they’d painstakingly spelled onto the Marauders’ Map so long ago. Squeezing through the tight places of the walls of his ancestral home had awakened something in him again, that was all.</p><p> </p><p>And yet, now Sirius’ eye was keener for magic and his mind was sharper for mischief, and he’d come across passages he’d never heard of or imagined.</p><p> </p><p>There was a tapestry on the ground floor, guarded by a suit of armor with a poleaxe, that hid a staircase corkscrewing to the roof and every odd-numbered floor. Just outside the doors to the Great Hall, a large potted vining plant which had grown up into the cracks and crevices of the stone wall behind it would, if complimented enough, shyly twist its tendrils into a ladder up the side of the castle. Where it stopped, there was a duct covered by the foliage that came out underneath the teachers’ table in the Great Hall.</p><p> </p><p><em>And</em>—and this was the one Sirius was most incredulous and offended that they hadn’t found before—there was a section of the wall in a hallway just off the Gryffindor Tower that, if tapped four times in succession, would reveal a staircase down to a tunnel that came out right outside the Transfiguration classroom. It took about two minutes to get there that way, instead of the normal seven and a half through the shifting corridors of the castle proper at a dead sprint.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius had sulked for more than an hour after finding that passage. He had gotten so many detentions in both his lifetimes for being late to McGonagall’s class—it was on the other side of the castle! How was it his <em>fault</em>?</p><p> </p><p>Now, staring at the fire trembling on the sconce, he wondered if maybe the castle weren’t trying to make it up to him. This hallway was deep within Hogwarts’ walls and so there shouldn’t be a draft here. Yet something was causing the flame to pull and flicker.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius glanced about to make sure no one was around, grabbed the sconce, and yanked.</p><p> </p><p>The flagstone under his feet flipped, dumping Sirius into the darkness beneath. He couldn’t stop the savage grin that split his face as he fell, and after almost six seconds he landed light as a feather, no doubt the result of some enchantment built in at the bottom. He called forth a <em>lumos</em>, still smiling madly at the knowledge that there was more to the castle than he’d remembered or known, and followed the cramped winding path, keeping his other hand on the opposite wall just in case the talk of a labyrinth under the castle was more than just a rumor. With every step, his heart beat faster, and he raised his wand a little higher. This castle was a thousand years old. Who knew what was down here?</p><p> </p><p>He turned a corner and stepped out into a cavernous room. The light of his <em>lumos </em>didn’t reach to the ceiling, but he could vaguely make out the ghostly impression of levels above that wrapped around the walls, and lots and lots of—shelves.</p><p> </p><p>Shelves that were loaded with books.</p><p> </p><p>He investigated, hoping to find something illegal or dangerous, but to his great disappointment it seemed like the books here were only overflow from the library upstairs. And a lot of the shelves didn’t even hold books, but old newspapers or magazines, whose featured front-cover witches and wizards waved frantically to try and catch Sirius’ eye.</p><p> </p><p>He ignored them all and slumped against one of the aisles, sighing. Disappointing or not, it was still a hidden room. Since he hadn’t known about this one either, it was likely that there were still other secret places left for him to discover. Whenever he and James (and maybe Remus, but never Peter) got around to making the Marauders’ Map again, they’d have so many new things to add to it. It would be just like old times.</p><p> </p><p>He patted the dust off his trousers and started looking for the way out.</p><hr/><p> The problem trying to stop a megalomaniac’s rise to power as one’s eleven-year-old self was that eleven-year-olds weren’t usually interested in politics, current events, or the thought that one day, they might need to remember what had happened to keep it all from happening again. This was a long-winded way to say that Severus hadn’t the slightest idea where Voldemort was now or what he was doing. He hadn’t exactly paid attention the first time around.</p><p> </p><p>(Although now that he thought of it, he’d been twelve for a week now. It was just like a birthday to sneak past him.)</p><p> </p><p>He shuffled through the thick stack of newspapers he’d collected from the other Ravenclaws and felt his headache twinge with every page he turned. There had to be something in here—there was no way Voldemort could have been grooming politicians for support on the Continent without any sort of paper trail.</p><p> </p><p>It was a simple equation:</p><p> </p><p>(Political influence) = (spending money to impress people) = (paper trail) = (a way for Severus to track where he’d been).</p><p> </p><p>“I haven’t seen you scowl that hard since James put that slug in your pocket,” Black said near his head, coming around the table. He dropped down into the chair across from Severus. “You haven’t been around much since we got back.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus hardly spared him a glance. “We’ve been complacent,” he said, rustling through the next paper and scanning it page by page, like he’d been doing for hours already this fine Saturday morning. “I’m trying to figure out where Voldemort is now.” He could feel his eye starting to twitch and threw the paper down on the table in disgust, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Of course,” he exhaled, “no one’s made the damn point-me spell for text yet. So this about a million times harder than it needs to be.”</p><p> </p><p>“Why don’t you ask Evans to help you make it? It’s a charm, isn’t it?” Black’s voice was unreasonably reasonable, and Severus grunted, moving the mandrake leaf around his mouth in annoyance.</p><p> </p><p>“She keeps wanting to talk about <em>the</em> <em>thing</em>. If she makes me take one more quiz out of <em>Witch Weekly </em>to see what my Animagus form will be, I swear I’m going to look her in the eye and spit my leaf at her.”</p><p> </p><p>“Is it because you keep getting a cat?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus grumbled. “That’s the default animal. It’s not even trying.”</p><p> </p><p>Black reached over and patted his shoulder. “Don’t feel too bad. The last quiz I took told me I’d be a boar. Can you believe that?”</p><p> </p><p>“You’re already a bore,” Severus said, and finally unpeeled his hands from his face, shrugging off Black’s hand. “What do you want?” He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you covered in dirt?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why’s your hair blue?” Black countered, fruitlessly brushing at his sleeve. “Where’s your hat?”</p><p> </p><p>“Where’s your <em>brain</em>?”</p><p> </p><p>They glared at each other for a moment and Severus sneered, picking his paper back up. Black glanced at it and his eyebrows rose in surprise. “Is that a Muggle paper?”</p><p> </p><p>“Ten points to Gryffindor.” Black kicked him under the table and he grunted, slapping the paper back down in frustration. “The wizarding papers are <em>worthless</em>. They’re all about who was invited to whose dinner party and what’s the latest scandal, and useless government fluff pieces. There’s nothing of what’s happening on the Continent at all except for Quidditch playoffs.” He ground his teeth at the moving pictures of vapid smiling politicians and vapid smiling socialites spread across the tabletop. “No wonder Voldemort was able to get so much power before people objected. Certainly reading these things wouldn’t have let you realize anything was ever happening.”</p><p> </p><p>“The same six Pureblood families have been swapping around ownership of the papers in Wizarding Britain since the Hushe-Monè Act was revoked in 1873,” Black said, linking his fingers together and stretching his arms out in front of his chest. “You won’t find anything in there that doesn’t play to one of their pet politicians. And a mindless public is a happy public, so they don’t put anything in that might make anyone think.” Black leaned backwards and cracked his back. “Was there anything in the Muggle paper?”</p><p> </p><p>“Muggle politics,” Severus grouched. The Muggle papers he’d gotten his hands on were too respectable to put in any unexplainable phenomena without explaining them first. Maybe conspiracy tabloids might be more reliable?</p><p> </p><p>Black nodded. “I bet we could find some good stuff in French papers. French wizards really hate their politicians, so they keep track of every little thing they do.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus thumped his head down onto the table and grumbled loudly about where they were supposed to find French wizarding papers.</p><p> </p><p>Black ignored him and went on cheerfully. “Besides, why does it matter what Voldemort is doing now anyway? You said he came back to Britain the year we graduated. It’s not like we could go out and kill him right now. What’s the rush?”</p><p> </p><p>“We don’t know where his Horcruxes are.”</p><p> </p><p>“His what?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus glanced around at the other tables in the mostly empty library and lifted his head, lowering his voice. He didn’t want to answer the questions certain teachers would ask if they found out what he knew. “I already told you about this. Pay attention, it’s illegal. If you want to live forever, there’s a way that you can split your soul into parts and put those parts into objects. Those are your Horcruxes. Unless they’re destroyed by something really strong, like basilisk venom or Fiendfyre, no one will ever be able to kill you.”</p><p> </p><p>“That sounds like magic my family would like,” Black said. “So he has what, two or three extra souls floating around?”</p><p> </p><p>“He had six last time,” Severus said. Or at least, Voldemort had intended to have six. Black didn’t need to know about the surprise seventh. “The problem is, I only know where they ended up, and not exactly when he would have put them there.”</p><p> </p><p>“But we need to destroy them before we can kill him?”</p><p> </p><p>“Unfortunately.”</p><p> </p><p>“Can we check where you know they already ended up?”</p><p> </p><p>“We have to be careful about that. He might decide to use new hiding spots if he thinks the old ones are compromised.” Severus drummed his fingers on the table in thought. “But we should check. He might hide them as soon as he creates them. They aren’t the sort of thing he’d want to carry around with him.”</p><p> </p><p>Black leaned forward. “Are any of them hidden where we could actually get to them?”</p><p> </p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p> </p><p>“We can’t exactly use magic right now.” He gestured between their underage bodies. “So, can we get to any of them with Muggle transportation? If we move them, will he notice?”</p><p> </p><p>“That depends whether he ever checks on them.” Severus bit the inside of his cheek. It would be one thing if Voldemort thought someone had taken possession of one of his soul fragments by accident. Most people wouldn’t be motivated to destroy what they didn’t know was one of the most evil magics in existence. But if Voldemort saw evidence that someone was trying to get to his Horcruxes…That would be bad. “Like I said, we need to be careful.”</p><p> </p><p>Black rolled his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. So where are they?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus tapped the table. “There are two that I know of that ended up here. A diadem, in the Room of Requirement—”</p><p> </p><p>“The what?”</p><p> </p><p>“You know, the room that makes itself into whatever you need?” Severus looked at the stars that had appeared in Black’s eyes and scowled. “Don’t tell me you never found it.”</p><p> </p><p>Black leaned across the table and clasped Severus’ hands between his own. “Dearest of friends—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus shook him off. “Find it yourself.” He went on. “The other thing was his diary.”</p><p> </p><p>Black all but doubled over with the force of his sputter. “His <em>what?</em>” His shoulders began to shake. “The evilest person since Grindelwald has a <em>diary?</em>” He looked up and started belly laughing. “Does he keep it under his pillow too?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus rolled up a newspaper and smacked Black across the head with it a few times to get him back on track, but it didn’t do much. Black was howling with mirth and every eye on the library was on them. Madame Pince detached herself from her desk and advanced.</p><p> </p><p>Severus scraped all the newspapers together into one giant, ragged pile, twisted them into something he could carry under his arm, and bolted. Self-preservation was and had always been a Slytherin’s foremost instinct.</p><p> </p><p>It was, apparently, not such an instinct for a Gryffindor. Outside the library, Black groaned and rubbed his posterior. Madam Pince had levitated him through the library doors and dropped him with extreme prejudice. “Can she do that?” He wobbled to his feet and glared at the doors. “I feel like she shouldn’t be able to do that.”</p><p> </p><p>“Her library, her law.” Severus whacked Black upside the head once more for good measure. “And now you’ve gone and done it.”</p><p> </p><p>Black threw his arms up in self-defense. “What’s wrong with your common room?”</p><p> </p><p>“Elucidata Lavenry finally got her way with her House-wide research project and if I go up there I’ll get roped into it.” Severus thumped the loose roll of newspapers against his palm. “She’s trying to figure out the charm that makes boots dance by themselves.”</p><p> </p><p>Black goggled through his up-raised hands. “What for?”</p><p> </p><p>“So she’ll know how the charm that makes boots dance by themselves works,” Severus grunted, and started walking away. “Obviously.” He didn’t wait to see if Black would follow.</p><p> </p><p>That was the difference between Slytherins and Ravenclaws. Slytherins did things for a greater purpose, whereas Ravenclaws did the thing for the sake of the thing itself. In Severus’ experience, a Slytherin would only try to figure out how something worked if there could be a way to profit off it.</p><p> </p><p>The fastest way to a Slytherin’s heart was by a toll road indeed.</p><p> </p><p>Black caught up to Severus, apparently recovered from being thrown out of the library like a drunk from a bar. “I should have known better than to aggravate Pince,” he sighed, slouching along with his hands in his pockets. “Not while she’s hungover.”</p><p> </p><p>“What?”</p><p> </p><p>Black nodded. “I recognize all the symptoms. <em>Intimately</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus grunted again and walked faster, but Black kept pace, ticking off on his fingers as he spoke. “Irritability, irrational hatred toward the source of all loud noises. Wearing yesterday’s clothes—that’s a big one.”</p><p> </p><p>“All her clothes look the same,” Severus said.</p><p> </p><p>Black shook his head. “Her outfit has a certain <em>eau de slept in</em>. Trust me, I would know.” He stared ahead in reminiscence. “You haven’t really lived until you’ve woken up in an ambulance because you fell asleep in a ditch and a jogger thought you were dead. Good times.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus wasn’t sure what look was on his face, but if Black saw it, he didn’t seem bothered.</p><p> </p><p>“Also, she had Hangover-b-Gone in her thermos. I could smell it.”</p><p> </p><p>“What were you doing that close to her?”</p><p> </p><p>From this distance, it was quite evident that Black still had cobwebs in his hair. He grinned, stretched, and preened. “<em>Well…</em>”</p><p> </p><p>Sensing that this was going nowhere no time soon, Severus lifted the arm that held the rolled-up newspapers.</p><p> </p><p>“All right, all right! Geez…” Black turned his head and sulked. “You have no appreciation for theatre. How are you even friends with Lucius?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus raised the papers again.</p><p> </p><p>“Fine! Anyway, you remember the Marauders’ Map?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus did, in fact, remember the Marauders’ Map. They were not happy memories.</p><p> </p><p>Black didn’t seem to notice Severus’ eyes boring into the side of his head. “I thought we found all the secret passages there were last time, but I’ve been finding more! Although most of them aren’t very exciting. The one today looked like it only had overflow from the library. The way out—it was like a <em>million</em> stairs—came up right behind Pince’s desk.” He grinned. “I’m glad she hit the sauce so hard last night.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus frowned. Something niggled at the back of his mind. “A passage filled with books?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, it was a room.” Black stopped and gestured with his hands. “A big one. I’m not sure why they have all that stuff down there, though. It looked like a bunch of junk to me. Just old textbooks and magazines and—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus stopped in the middle of the hallway, suddenly wanting to smack himself. “The <em>archives</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Black paused. “I guess you could call it that?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus put his hand over his face and groaned. “<em>How </em>could I forget.” He turned on his heel and started going back the way they had come.</p><p> </p><p>Black seemed miffed. “You knew about it?”</p><p> </p><p>“All the faculty know about it. Hogwarts is technically still a research facility, so they’ve got ongoing subscriptions to the major journals in most magical fields. I bet that means they’ve got some newspapers or tabloids too. Maybe even foreign ones.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s great, but why are we going this way?”</p><p> </p><p>“This is the way to the staircase down,” Severus said. “Not the one behind Madam Pince’s desk.”</p><p> </p><p> “Don’t you want to see the new way I found?” Black’s eyes sparkled. Foolishly, Severus didn’t notice. “It’s faster.”</p><hr/><p>“I hate you,” Severus chanted. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”</p><p> </p><p>He clutched his knees to his chest and pressed his face into the dirt. Undignified. But surely anyone would do the same after falling for half one’s natural lifespan.</p><p> </p><p>Black was laughing to the point of gasping again, the bezoar-licker. <em>He </em>must think it funny to pull a candelabra on the wall oh-so-casually and drop the floor out from underneath unsuspecting Ravenclaws. Severus resolved to put frogs’ eggs into his tea at the next convenient moment.</p><p> </p><p>“Your <em>scream</em>,” Black wheezed, and crumpled against the wall.</p><p> </p><p>“I hate you,” Severus said again, although muffled by the ground, and did his best to pull himself upright with liquified abdominal muscles. Once he’d gotten to his knees, standing didn’t seem so impossible either. He brushed himself off in defiance of his shaking hands and thought about throwing a jinx or two at Black, but enclosed spaces meant a high likelihood of ricochet. And besides, it would be much more satisfying to get back at Black when he wasn’t expecting it.</p><p> </p><p>Although this <em>would </em>be quite a convenient place to kill someone and dispose of the body.</p><p> </p><p>Black was still laughing too hard to breathe, so Severus gave him the finger, lit the tip of his wand himself, and went on wobbly knees down the twisting tunnel out into the room of books no one ever read. <em>“Lux discipulae luceat,” </em>he said into the dark room, and torches on the walls lit themselves with hissing white fire. He’d had to come down here once or twice before for some obscure references to old Potions theories. Luckily he still remembered the incantation, or he’d have had to have held his lit wand between his teeth so his hands could be free.</p><p> </p><p>Black wobbled out behind him, wiping his eyes and smearing dirt all over his face. Every so often, another hiccupping chuckle would ripple down his frame.</p><p> </p><p>“Make yourself useful,” Severus said coldly, then endeavored to ignore him. He found that newspapers were being kept to the right side of the room, but the more he looked, the more he despaired. Hogwarts appeared to have been collecting periodicals since the invention of print media. Many weren’t in English, which boded well for the investigation and terribly for Severus’ frontal lobe. Translation spells always gave him such a headache.</p><p> </p><p>“When are we looking?” Black said, finally recovered from his attack of hysteria. He tagged along behind Severus down the aisle. “1950-1995?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus scanned for the year markings on the shelves. “We’re still in 1972, Black. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”</p><p> </p><p>Black groaned. “I keep doing that. Do you keep doing that?”</p><p> </p><p>Severus ignored him. “Voldemort graduated in 1945, if I remember right. He got into politics around…1961? We can probably ignore anything past ’79 since he’d already come back to England by then, and to the best of my knowledge he didn’t make more Horcruxes here before he died in ’81.” At least, he hadn’t intended to. “So grab newspapers between ’38 and ’80, just to be safe.”</p><p> </p><p>Black looked down the looming stretch of aisles, each stuffed to the brim with papers, and his face dropped. “I just remember I had something important to do today—”</p><p> </p><p>Severus booted him in the shins. “Consider this your apology for that stunt you pulled on the way down. Get over to 1980 and start pulling. We can come from opposite ends and meet in the middle.”</p><p> </p><p>“The things I do for James,” Black muttered, and dutifully went.</p><hr/><p>Sirius was going to attribute his early death to the untimeliest sneeze in his whole existence.</p><p> </p><p>What a thing to go on his gravestone.</p><p> </p><p>He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs in despair and imagined all the nice things that would be said at his funeral.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What a tragedy.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He was taken from us too early.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He was so talented.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>So charming.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>So handsome.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And such a modest young man, too—</em>
</p><p> </p><p>But even soothed by such thoughts, Sirius’ mind betrayed him. Suddenly Snape’s sardonic, sneering voice cut through the imaginary murmurs of the sympathetic mourners. </p><p> </p><p><em>Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? </em>The mourners were shocked into silence. <em>What kind of idiot sneezes out his mandrake leaf five days before the next full moon?</em></p><p> </p><p>Sirius probed around his mouth with his tongue and peeked through his fingers, hoping beyond hope that he’d bumped his head somehow wandering down here for hours through Hogwarts’ dusty secret archives (damn <em>dust!</em>) and this crisis was all in his mind. But it was not to be. His soggy little mandrake leaf was still plastered on the spine of a cloth-bound book where his sneeze had rocketed it, like some sad abandoned piece of green papier mâché. It glistened in the light of the heatless flames on the walls, mocking him. As he watched, it started to lose its battle with gravity and unpeel from the cloth. Sirius could only pinch the bridge of his nose and imagine his fate.</p><p> </p><p>Snape was going to <em>murder</em> him. James’s and Evans’ leaves were fakes, and now Sirius didn’t have a leaf either. Snape had made that stabilizing potion to help with the transformation, but without Sirius to act as a guinea pig to take it first and do the transformation, Snape wouldn’t do it either. Remus would spend more nights alone and crying in the shack.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius stared sightlessly at his papier mâché leaf, hands still moving mechanically to pull and shrink papers, and scolded himself for overreacting. It probably didn’t matter too much—the ritual couldn’t be completed until there was a lightning storm anyway. It was still January. They probably wouldn’t get a lightning storm up here until April or May. Sirius had plenty of time to hold another leaf in his mouth.</p><p> </p><p>With that said, there was really no reason to tell Snape, was there?</p><p> </p><p>Sirius nodded to himself. It was an easily correctable mistake; Snape didn’t have to know. It was a shame, he admitted, that he’d lost all the effort that he’d put into not swallowing that leaf, but some things couldn’t be helped. He’d do better on the next one.</p><p> </p><p>He could hear Snape in the aisle over, rustling pages and occasionally biting out a curse. (The edges of shrunken papers were no less sharp.) Sirius cleared his throat. “How’s it going?” he called, pitching his voice so it didn’t get lost in the vast echoing emptiness of the cavernous room. His inquiry had nothing to do with the slow squiggle of guilt that was starting to move at the base of his spine.</p><p> </p><p>“Fine,” Snape called back, short. “I’m at 1954. Where are you?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius winced. “1971.”</p><p> </p><p>The ensuing silence from Snape was frosty.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius hurried to soften it. “Hey, these were big years! Lots of things happened!”</p><p> </p><p>“So they did,” Snape said, sounding not at all impressed.</p><p> </p><p>They worked for another two hours in silence that made Sirius’ shoulder blades itch. Snape rebuffed any overture of conversation, until finally, working side by side in 1966, they pulled and shrank the last few papers.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius groaned in relief and stretched his lower back. “Thank Merlin. James had better appreciate all the work we’ve put into keeping him alive.”</p><p> </p><p>Snape grunted in agreement (or maybe effort), hoisting his bag over his shoulder. It was stuffed to the brim with miniaturized newspapers, but no amount of weightlessness charms could make it less awkward to carry. “I’ve got to find somewhere to put these.” He shot Sirius an accusing glare. “Somewhere that’s not the library, thanks to you.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius shrugged. “With all your need for secrecy, I rather feel like I’ve done you a favor.” He twisted against a shelf to pop his spine. “Where’s the other way out?”</p><p> </p><p>Snape led him to another staircase and they began the climb. After a few hundred vertical feet, Sirius’ prepubescent thighs began to burn. “These stairs are forever long!” He could have sworn the other staircase wasn’t as bad.</p><p> </p><p>To Sirius’ secret relief, Snape didn’t look like he was faring much better. “Why do you think no one ever comes down here?” he asked witheringly, or at least as witheringly as he could while breathing like a pug. His swollen bag teetered on his shoulder and overbalanced him on his next step. “Shit!”</p><p> </p><p>Snape went down hard and just laid there. Sirius sat on the step next to him in a show of solidarity. “So, he left a diadem in that room I have to find,” he began, hoping to delay starting again. “And a diary where?”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s what I have to figure out,” Snape muttered, pushing himself up. “He gave it to Lucius last time, but Lucius isn’t a Death Eater yet.” He paused and stared into space with his unsettling dark eyes. “Probably.”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s fifteen,” Sirius said, uncomfortably reminded of Regulus.</p><p> </p><p>Snape exhaled slowly. “He was one of the ones who took the Mark first. I was a second-year, so he would have been a sixth-year…I remember now. That was when Voldemort started recruiting Purebloods and reestablishing his foothold in England.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius frowned. “I thought you said he came back in our seventh year.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s when he came back. He started laying the groundwork before then.”</p><p> </p><p>Another thought occurred to Sirius. “Lucius took it at sixteen? He doesn’t seem <em>that</em> radical. He talks to you and all.”</p><p> </p><p>“His father made him,” Snape said.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, <em>sure</em>,” Sirius said, unimpressed. “His daddy made him do it.”</p><p> </p><p>Snape paused and drummed his fingers on the step, wedging his mandrake leaf between his teeth until he finally spoke. “Lucius is…a very proud person. He likes to be in control. And when he’s not, he convinces himself he’s only that way because he chooses to be. He’ll lie and lie and lie to himself about how deep he’s in something if it means he can keep thinking he’s got a handle on it all. So yes, his father had him join the Death Eaters.” Snape glanced at Sirius’ doubtful face and cut him off before he could speak. “I’m not trying to absolve him. Everything he did after that, he chose to do. But he was never inherently evil, and he’s not evil now.”</p><p> </p><p>“Right,” Sirius said, dour. “Anyway, so you think…what? That we can use him to get at Voldemort?”</p><p> </p><p>Snape sighed. “You made me think of something. You know how I used to be really good at Legilimency and Occlumency?”</p><p> </p><p>“You were?”</p><p> </p><p>Snape shot him a look. “It’s <em>the whole reason</em> I was able to double-cross Voldemort. How do you not know?”</p><p> </p><p>“Those meetings were dead boring,” Sirius said. “I slept through half of them.” He placidly watched Snape. “I should get a punch card for every time I make you make that face. And when I fill it out all the way, I get to get myself a bottle of Firewhiskey.”</p><p> </p><p>“You’ll die of alcohol poisoning,” Snape muttered. “<em>Anyway—</em>”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius interrupted. “Does Legilimency mean you can read minds?”</p><p> </p><p>“Not exactly.” Snape stared at the ceiling and sighed. “At a glance, I can see surface-level stream-of-conscious. But that isn’t very helpful. It’s constantly getting interrupted by other thoughts.”</p><p> </p><p>“Like what?”</p><p> </p><p>“Like <em>my feet are cold </em>or <em>these pants are too tight</em>, <em>fuck this class is going on forever</em>, or parts of songs, or imaginary arguments, or—anything, really. It makes it very hard to get anything useful off the surface.”</p><p> </p><p>“So what you’re saying is, the more someone gets distracted, the harder it is to read their mind?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes,” Snape said. “Yours is all but impossible.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius sputtered. <em>Rude</em>. “Wait, you’ve tried?”</p><p> </p><p>“But once you go further down into the mind,” Snape said, ignoring him, “that’s where you start finding useful things. Things that they’ve made an effort to remember, things that they just happened to remember, things that they’ve tried not to remember.” He shifted a little on the stair. “Have you ever heard of a memory palace? Actually—describe a box to me. Any sort.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius thought for a moment. “It’s pure gold and a mile on each side,” he said finally, leaning back in satisfaction.</p><p> </p><p>Snape made that face again. Sirius was really going to have to get a punch card.</p><p> </p><p>However, Snape valiantly rallied. “I read that question in a Muggle magazine once. The idea is, if you’re not given any direction on what the box should be like, you subconsciously put yourself in its place. How you describe the box is how you subconsciously think of yourself.” He shot Sirius a dirty look.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius preened.</p><p> </p><p>“Complete Muggle bollocks, of course, but it’s sort of how Legilimency works on that deeper level. How someone’s mind looks to me shows how they perceive themselves.” Snape traced the edge of the stair. “Many people don’t think too hard about the way they perceive themselves. Their minds default to some place they consider safe and familiar, like the home they grew up in. It’s easy to break into, and they store their memories right where you think they would.</p><p> </p><p>“But then there are people who have a lot of self-awareness or a lot of training. Take Lucius. He perceives his mind as a castle, and he’s able to lay traps and manipulate his mindscape. He’s the sort that’s going to be able to fight back if I poke around.”</p><p> </p><p>“Couldn’t you do it without him noticing?”</p><p> </p><p>Snape scoffed. “Hardly.”</p><p> </p><p>“That makes it less useful,” Sirius muttered. “How are you supposed to find out if he’s met Voldemort yet?”</p><p> </p><p>“I wasn’t going to look in his head. I was going to look in mine.”</p><p> </p><p>“What? Why?”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s something I should have already thought about doing to make sure I’ve remembered things correctly.” Snape sighed and got to his feet. “Lucius and I talked, once, about the first time we each met Voldemort. But we were both not entirely sober, so I’m not entirely sure right now what it was he said. I feel like it was important.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius snorted and also got up. “Trust you to do things the hard way. Why can’t you just ask him if his daddy wants him to join a cult?”</p><p> </p><p>“And clue Voldemort in that <em>we’re</em> around, when he does get to looking through Lucius’ head?” Severus scowled, already several stairs ahead. “Top-tier idea, Black.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius grumbled and caught up to him. “What does my mind look like?”</p><p> </p><p>“How should I know?” Snape slung his bag over to his other shoulder. “It’s <em>your</em> mind.”</p><p> </p><p>“You mean you never looked?”</p><p> </p><p>“I just told you I wouldn’t be able to without you noticing. Wouldn’t you have tattled straight to Dumbledore?”</p><p> </p><p>“That was when you were evil,” Sirius said. “You could try now.”</p><p> </p><p>Snape shook his head. “Using magic is like using a muscle, and mine haven’t been built up yet. Besides,” he said, and his dark eyes glittered, “do you really trust me enough to let me into the innermost core of yourself? Who knows what damage I could do in there. Who knows what I might <em>see</em>.”</p><hr/><p>“I’m going to eat everything at dinner,” Black wheezed, dragging himself up the last step. “The food, the table, anyone who doesn’t stand far enough away. I’m just going to—” he made a vacuuming sound. Severus briefly wondered how he knew what a vacuum was. “And then I am going to sleep. For four days.”</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ stomach gurgled. He’d missed lunch, but his conversation with Black on the staircase had wiped out his appetite. Of all the places to look for Voldemort, he’d forgotten about the cracks and crevasses of his own mind, the things he’d tried to forget and the things he’d been forced to remember.</p><p> </p><p>He tugged on the strap of his bag. “I’m going to drop these off in my dorm.”</p><p> </p><p>“All right, see you at dinner,” Black said, and took off toward the kitchen.</p><p> </p><p>Severus went back to his dorm room and sat on his bed with the blue velvet curtains pulled tightly around. He was skilled enough at Legilimency that a distraction short of the room catching fire wouldn’t bother him, but he didn’t want his dormmates asking questions. This might take a while.</p><p> </p><p>He leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth like a free diver about to go down.</p><p> </p><p>His mind could be a terribly treacherous place. Even he had had to learn that the hard way.</p><p> </p><p>Severus breathed out one last time and opened his mind’s eyes to a cavern whose roof rose above his head like the ceiling of a cathedral and whose walls glinted with wetness in the flickering light of the torch he held. The air was damp and cold and tasted of the innards of the earth, of things unspoken and things unseen, and as he turned slowly, torch aloft, it seemed to him that the weight of secrets on his tongue became heavier until he faced the entrance of a tunnel from which a great cold breath of wind gusted in a steady sigh, whipping his hair over his forehead and threatening the flame of his torch until it cowered.</p><p> </p><p>There it is, Severus thought, and went towards it, goosebumps raised on the bare skin of his thin arms and the rubber soles of his shoes scuffing against the loose rocks on the ground.</p><p> </p><p>He followed the wind, the chill and the smell of it, through a labyrinth of caves and passages riddled with dead ends and treacherous spots, whose floors were half-flooded with water that gave off the tang of metal. Not for the first time, Severus marveled a little bitterly at the ingenuity of his own mind.</p><p> </p><p>He had seen the shape of others’ minds before, the inner sanctum of themselves where they kept their secrets and their sorrows. He had seen lockboxes and puzzle boxes, castles and fortresses, dungeons and high towers and walled-off gardens bristling with thorny roses.</p><p> </p><p>Others’ minds were designed to keep other people out.</p><p> </p><p>Severus’ mind was designed for other people to come in and get lost.</p><p> </p><p>He’d never had the luxury of putting all his mind’s fortifications in one spot. Voldemort had the sort of mental power that could blast through any resistance, so the only defense was to make him think he’d already found everything that Severus had ever tried to hide.</p><p> </p><p>Severus had had to make Voldemort think that he knew how Severus thought. He didn’t put anything out in the open—that would have been too easy for someone that Voldemort could see had a mind like a labyrinth. Instead, he hid the things he wanted Voldemort to see just well enough that Voldemort would be sure to find them, behind traps in places where it seemed logical for traps to be placed. It had fed Voldemort’s ego to think that that he was so much smarter than Severus, and meanwhile Severus’ real secrets, the dark and dangerous things he knew and couldn’t think of, were sunken in the flooded tunnels of his mind.</p><p> </p><p>The cave-cold wind pulled harder at the flame of Severus’ torch and Severus cupped his hand around it to shield it. He kept walking, shoes grinding against the grit and the stones on the ground, until he found the little opening in the wall that was breathing out the heavy cold air in a steady stream. The cave floor beside it was pocked and pitted with wide pools of placid water that looked no more than a few feet deep.</p><p> </p><p>But looks could be deceptive.</p><p> </p><p>Severus planted his torch into the ground and stepped into one of the pools. The frigid water came above his knees and he bit back a curse, but it was only going to get more unpleasant from here. There was a tunnel hidden under the water that would take him to where he needed to go.</p><p> </p><p>If he didn’t drown, that was.</p><p> </p><p>He crouched, feeling along the submerged edge of the pool until he found the opening. Then, without giving himself time to question all his bad life decisions, he ducked under the water and propelled himself through, using his grip on the lip of the hole to give himself an extra burst of speed. When it ran out, he reached blindly and used the fingertips of his right hand against the tunnel’s rough walls to push himself forward, freezing cold and suspended in the absolute darkness of his mind, submerged in the swirl of insignificant memories that filled in the gaps of his psyche and rounded out the figure of his unadulterated character.</p><p> </p><p>The psychological element at play here was meant to be the last line of defense against an intruder. Even knowing that Severus himself must have to be able to make it through this sunken tunnel, the mindscape amplified the innate human fear of drowning. Bad enough to drown in the real world, where at least they might be able to find your body. Worse to drown here, overwhelmed by another’s utterness, where the empty husk of your defeated, intrusive mind would just—remain. Forever, unless Severus moved it.</p><p> </p><p>Even those bold enough to start the swim wouldn’t make it far. Severus had put little empty spaces along the way (metaphorical air pockets, where he could collect himself before going on), but he had spaced them far apart enough that he was blurring the edges of his identity when he got there. Anyone else, who couldn’t be sure that the “air pockets” even existed, or that they hadn’t already missed them, would do the hard job of psyching themselves out. After all, what if this tunnel were a trap? Not wanting to drown in someone else’s mind, they would turn back before they lost themselves, in theory not stupid or suicidal enough to keep going in the hope they might find more.</p><p> </p><p>He reached the first air pocket and switched to his left hand to feel along the wall so he wouldn’t go down the wrong tunnel.</p><p> </p><p>No one had ever even found his secret tunnel, so the last line of defense remained untested. But Severus was confident in his assessment. The real question, the one that no one considered, was exactly how lethal it would be for one to drown in one’s <em>own</em> mind. If other people died in someone else’s mindscape, their consciousness, as Severus had read, would be subsumed by that person’s mind and memories and emotions.</p><p> </p><p>For Severus himself, he thought it likely (from unpleasantly close experience) that he would lose the definite edges of his consciousness, but he also though it might not be impossible that he could find them again. Inconvenient, to be sure, but probably not lethal. Which was why he had dared to do this.</p><p> </p><p>He reached the second air pocket and came to the realization that at some point, he would need to tuck away all the memories of the dream. It wouldn’t do to have years of subterfuge ruined because of an oversight.</p><p> </p><p>While he was mulling this over, unpleasantly aware that hiding his memories here would restrict his vivid recollection of them, he came to the third air pocket, and from there it wasn’t too much further. He surfaced into darkness, gasping although he didn’t need to, and swam blindly until he hit a shelf of bare rock jutting from the wall. As he pulled himself onto it, a line of cast-iron lanterns hanging from wrought-iron branches lit themselves one by one, and the crystalline forms of his memories embedded in the walls caught their light and glittered.</p><p> </p><p>He walked down the line, glancing at the scene that played within their faceted depths. There were more than he had remembered there being, but he guessed that was what happened when you lived a life of deceit. Dumbledore, Lily, Dumbledore, Order meeting, Dumbledore, Dumbledore, Lucius—</p><p> </p><p>Why weren’t these chronological? His past self had a lot to answer for.</p><p> </p><p>Finally he found it, a picture of a parlor and a pair of brandy snifters and Lucius, hanging half-off a loveseat, illuminated only by the fire in the hearth. Severus laid his fingers on its surface and the scene bloomed in front of his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Guess what,” Lucius says, and tries to drink from his glass at an angle incompatible with gravity.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“What?” Severus says back, slouching in his own chair and hoping to see Lucius get brandy up his nose.  Abraxas is away so they’re in the Manor without fear, and Severus is enjoying rubbing his filthy half-blood self onto furniture that’s probably worth more than he’ll ever make in his lifetime.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lucius is too drunk to notice. “I’m getting married,” he says, like he’s remarking upon the weather.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>Severus chokes so aggressively he gets brandy up his own nose. “To </em>who?<em>”</em></p><p> </p><p><em>“To </em>whom<em>,” Lucius corrects, and smirks. “Narcissa Black.”</em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“I thought you said the Blacks were inbred past the limits of decency.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Well,” Lucius says, suddenly brisk, “my father doesn’t think so, and he’s arranged things with her aunt. It’ll be within the next month.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“I think she’s smart,” Severus says after a pause, in lieu of anything else to say. “I’ve spoken with her once or twice.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lucius shrugs. “If nothing else, she’s pretty. And she has a good dowry. Not that that means much to me.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>They’re quiet for a moment.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Anyway,” Lucius says, looking into the fire in the hearth, “she’s going to be a part of this too.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“A part of what?” Severus asks, swirling the amber liquid in his glass with what he hopes is an elegant turn of his wrist. He’s sober enough marvel about how they’ve been downing high-grade whiskey like water but drunk enough not to completely follow Lucius’ ramblings.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“The Dark Lord’s campaign,” Lucius tells him, twisting his torso so he can see Severus better. The firelight catches on his brow and makes the hollows of his eye sockets inscrutable, dark. “Although she’s new to it. I’m to introduce her to Him.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“You introduced me to Him too,” Severus says absently, having lost interest. He runs his finger down the seam in the cushion. “Sometimes I feel like you were the one who introduced everyone to Him.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lucius preens a little, as much as he can when he’s bent backwards over thin air. “I met Him first.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Really?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“We were at a dinner party in Greece that summer,” Lucius begins, scrabbling against the arm of the loveseat to try and pull himself up. “Dreadfully boring, of course,” he grunts out, sloshing brandy over his wrist. “Those types of things always are—” Eventually he’s mostly upright and goes on. “Some fellow wanted to overthrow the government, and Father and I were there to see if there would be any benefit to us—and He was there.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“What was He like?” Severus asks. Despite himself, he can’t help but feel like there’s something he has in common with the Dark Lord. Presumptuous, he knows. And </em>
  <em>yet…</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>Lucius shivers. “I’ve been around the rich and powerful all my life. My father’s been buying politicians </em>his <em>whole life. He was standing together with the Dark Lord, talking about contributing to His campaign—” Lucius’ voice drops like he’s telling a secret—“ and if I hadn’t known, I couldn’t have told you who was the master and who was the servant. That was when I knew…that </em>real power <em>takes its own form.”</em></p><p> </p><p>The memory, having played, settled back into solidity, and Severus was left to mull over what he had just seen. This summer (for it was the summer before Lucius’ sixth year), Lucius would meet the Dark Lord in Greece and take the Mark. Severus had until then to decide whether he should prevent it or whether he should take advantage of it.</p><p> </p><p><em>Great,</em> Severus thought, sour and tired. Another moral conundrum for him to prove to himself what a terrible person he really was. With that happy thought, and the beginning of a splitting headache, he began his long trek back to the real world.</p><hr/><p>Sirius almost squealed when the door appeared at the end of his third pass through the hall. He restrained himself to clasping his hands together and hopping from foot to foot in a little happy dance.</p><p> </p><p>He’d done in only three weeks what his past self hadn’t done in seven years, and oh, what trouble he could get up to with the help of a room that could make whatever he contrived to need! The Marauder in him was quivering with joy.</p><p> </p><p>He grasped the handle with trembling fingers, pushed the door open with a spasm of glee—and his euphoria dried up when he saw who had beaten him there.</p><p> </p><p>“Took you long enough,” Snape said, almost buried in a pile of newspapers atop a giant squashy corduroy armchair with scissors in his hand. None of it disguised the smirk on his face as he glanced up at Sirius.</p><p> </p><p>“No!” Sirius wailed at the ceiling. “I specifically requested a room full of pin-up models! I want a refund!”</p><p> </p><p>Snape snorted. “I should have known that’s the first thing you’d think of.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius pointed an accusing finger. “No, <em>I </em>should have known! You made me find this room on my own and you’ve been camping out up here the whole time!”</p><p> </p><p>Snape shrugged, unapologetic, and kept snipping. “You were the one that got us banned from the library. Thanks for reminding me about here, by the way.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius sulked, but it was half-hearted. He didn’t have the energy for a full sulk right now. He wandered around the perimeter of the room, kicking at the table legs. “Where’s the evil tiara?” </p><p> </p><p>“Safely hidden,” Snape said.</p><p> </p><p>"Come on!”</p><p> </p><p>Snape lifted his head and stared at him. “Look me in the eyes and tell me the first thing you’d have done wouldn’t be to put it on.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius shut his jaw with a click and wondered if he couldn’t, in fact, rally the reserves for a full sulk. He’d used a lot of sulking power over the past few weeks to guilt the castle into showing him to the room. “Whatever,” he said, trying to affect an air of nonchalance. “Why are the walls made of cork?”</p><p> </p><p>Snape got shifty-eyed and tried to rearrange himself in his chair to hide the balls of yarn at his side without Sirius noticing.</p><p> </p><p>Sirius goggled, then cackled, and Snape scowled and threw one of them at him. Sirius caught it easily and smirked. “You’re about to go full psycho, huh?” He gestured broadly with the yarn. “I can see it now—a whole wall covered in newspaper clippings, connected by hundreds of lines of yarn, and you, standing in front of it, unshaven, unshowered, muttering to yourself <em>what could it mean</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>Snape’s next yarn ball hit him square in the head.</p><p> </p><p>“You found the room, Black. Now go away.” Snape bent back to his work with only the slightest hint of an embarrassed flush visible at his ears.</p><p> </p><p>“No, no, I appreciate the aesthetic. And while I’m here—” Sirius started to glance around for another chair and found one immediately to his right where it certainly hadn’t been before. <em>How convenient</em>, he thought, and dragged it closer to Snape to achieve optimal bothering range.</p><p> </p><p>Snape thunked his head against the back of his chair. <em>“What.”</em></p><p> </p><p>Sirius sat and innocently swung his legs. “Why don’t we have Remus get an Animagus form?” He’d been thinking about this for a while, in fact—wouldn’t it be convenient if one transformation could supersede another on the night of the full moon? He’d wondered why no one had thought of it before.</p><p> </p><p>Snape tapped his scissors against his papers. “He can’t, for the same reason a single person can’t have two. He’s basically already a shitty Animagus. His transformation just has conditions and side effects.”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius pondered this and deflated, propping his chin up on his fist. “I’m trying to figure out how to let Remus know we know, so we can help him out during the full moon again. I thought maybe we could offer to let him join our ritual, but…”</p><p> </p><p>“He’d probably turn us all in to the teachers,” Snape said. “Besides, isn’t he friends with Pettigrew still? Would he be able to keep it a secret from him?”</p><p> </p><p>“He probably wouldn’t want to,” Sirius muttered, scowling. For the life of him, he couldn’t realize why Remus chose to be friends with that rat. Sure, they were all eleven again, but Peter didn’t have anything to <em>recommend </em>him as a friend. He was fat, awkward, bad at school, bad at sports, and would grow up to betray them all. Sirius, with his higher standards and more practiced eye, had tried to subtly explain this to Remus more than once, but all it had accomplished was Remus looking at <em>him </em>coldly, which wasn’t part of the plan. Sirius had backed down hard before anything could get worse.</p><p> </p><p>Snape shrugged. “You might not be able to tell him at all then.” He shuffled some papers. “Of course, helping him depends on your Animagus form being large enough again that you won’t be in danger around him.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not the size that matters,” Sirius said, then realized what he had said and blundered on. “I mean, werewolves don’t usually attack animals. Only humans. Besides, I already know what my form is.” He liked being a dog. He had a great sense of smell, a handsome coat, and the charm to beg ear rubs from pretty girls without getting called a pervert.</p><p> </p><p>Snape shrugged again. “No one’s ever done the ritual twice. Who can say?” He folded over his paper and looked up. “About the final stage of the ritual—”</p><p> </p><p>“What about it?” Sirius was suddenly conscious of the new leaf hidden in his mouth. He had another week and a half to go before he could remake the potion the night of the full moon. Just because James’s and Evans’ potions were duds, didn’t mean his had to be. Lucky him that they wouldn’t get a lightning storm for another month or two at the very least.</p><p> </p><p>“There’s a freak lightning storm early Friday morning,” Snape said, tapping the weather forecast. Clouds made of black ink rolled beneath his fingers and branched lightning scribbled itself down the page. Evidently taking Sirius’ sudden guilty stillness as encouragement, he went on. “It’d be best to get our final transformation out of the way without Lily and Potter around to see. We should meet around three on the Astronomy Tower.”</p><p> </p><p>“This Friday? Are you sure you don’t mean <em>next</em> Friday?” Sirius said, helpless. The full moon was next Thursday.</p><p> </p><p>Snape had the <em>worst </em>timing.</p><p> </p><p>“Why can’t we just wait a few more months?” Sirius tried to put some logic behind his wheedling. “I have an exam Friday, it’s in McGonagall’s class and she’s already close to Trolling me—”</p><p> </p><p>“The potions have to be drunk during the <em>next </em>lightning storm, not <em>any </em>lightning storm. I’m not going around with a leaf in my mouth for another month, and <em>you</em> agreed to be my guinea pig.” Snape snipped his scissors at him. “Didn’t you want to do this as soon as possible to help Lupin?”</p><p> </p><p>Sirius felt a prickle of guilt. It was true; this whole operation had been his idea. “You’re right,” he said, and his face stretched into a wide fake smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”</p><hr/><p>Severus pulled his coat tighter around himself and cast a <em>tempus </em>to determine how late Black was running and thus how much he would be justified in chewing him out. The sky above was black with aggravated rumbling thunderclouds and he could feel the raw magic of the storm gathering and crackling against his skin. They had just a few minutes before they had to begin, and Severus pressed his staticky hair down against his scalp, calculating how long it would take before the storm reached its peak. He caught sight of Black out of the corner of his eye, dressed in his pajamas with a cloak on top, and whirled toward him.</p><p> </p><p>“Where have you been?” Severus shouted over the wind. “We need to start.”</p><p> </p><p>Lightning split the sky. Thunder answered immediately, and rain came down at once like someone had turned the spout on the garden hose.</p><p> </p><p>Black put a hand above his eyes to keep out the worst of the rain and said something, but another thunder drowned him out and Severus made a frustrated motion. Black came closer and yelled into Severus’ ear.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t do this!”</p><p> </p><p>“What do you mean <em>you can’t do this?</em>” Severus shouted back. “You said you were fine with it!”</p><p> </p><p>Black opened his mouth to say something but was overwhelmed by another roll of thunder.</p><p> </p><p>Severus beat him to it. “And if it doesn’t go like it’s supposed to, then you can enjoy life just fine with ears and a tail or whatever! Some people pay good money for that!”</p><p> </p><p>“I lost my leaf!” Black bellowed, and Severus stared at him in shock. Lightning appeared and disappeared all around them in a shifting furor of light, and the swirl of magic in the air was breaking against itself at a feverish pace. “I lost it! I can’t be your guinea pig!”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, that’s just GREAT!” Severus roared over the rain. That was it, then. A whole month, wasted. He swiped his soggy hair off his forehead and turned to go back inside, but Black grabbed his arm with a grip like a vice.</p><p> </p><p>“Why don’t <em>you </em>just do it?” Black shouted. “You can enjoy life just fine with ears and a tail or whatever! Why are you so scared?”</p><p> </p><p>“I have it hard enough as it is!” Severus screeched back. “The last thing I need is to go through life with <em>whiskers, </em>damn it!”</p><p> </p><p>For a second, the rain let up and the thunder died down, and Black squirmed in the sudden quiet. “I know I say a lot, but you’re really not <em>that</em> ugly—hey! Don’t hurt me!” Then the gale came back with a vengeance and they were again reduced to shouting at each other.</p><p> </p><p>“You can do it for Remus, can’t you?” Black bellowed. “Take the damn potion!”</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck off, Black!” Severus tried to wrest his arm away from Black’s grasp. “I told you, I’m not doing it!”</p><p> </p><p>Black wasn’t done. “Don’t you trust your own work? I thought you were supposed to be a <em>Potions master</em>! I guess you’re good for nothing after all!”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s the first rule of being a Potions Master!” Severus shouted. “Never test your own potions!”</p><p> </p><p>“Then you’re all bloody cowards!” Black let go of Severus’ arm and shoved him, and Severus staggered. </p><p> </p><p>The storm was almost at its climax now. If there was a chance of succeeding, it would be—</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck <em>you</em>, Black!” Severus shrieked, and uncorked the little vial he’d been holding in his other hand. “If you’re so great, then <em>fuck off and do it alone!</em>”</p><p> </p><p>He threw the potion back like a shot of whiskey and stood in the downpour, drenched and fuming and with a trail of fire down his throat. Black could insult the way he looked and his personality and even his potions, but how <em>dare</em> he call Severus a coward.  </p><p> </p><p>Severus’ vision was blurring now and the fire had spread from his throat down his extremities. Distantly, he thought that this had perhaps been a bad idea, but there was nothing for it but to double down, especially not in front of Black, so he grit his teeth and thought very hard about being something other than human. The potion was making him into a conduit for the magic collected by the storm, enough to kick-start the transformation, and it coursed up and down his body until he was floating somewhere outside himself, grasping for a hold on a tenuous notion that was starting to coalesce out of an incoherent juddering mess into reality. Severus perceived, more with his whole self than with any singular sense, that his arms had become leathery wings, that his clenched teeth felt very small and sharp, and that the short clicks from the back of his throat were building a scene in negative of his surroundings. The magic rushed through him and out of him, its work done, and Severus fell.</p><p> </p><p>But not very far, because when he tried to throw out his arms to catch himself, wings that he’d never had propelled his small, light body up, and he was still at eye-level with Black although Black was suddenly much, much bigger. Black’s mouth was open and his eyes were wide, and as Severus realized belatedly that he needed to keep flapping to keep his height, Black threw back his head and boomed out a laugh. Not high and bright like a child, but full-bellied, like the man he’d once been and would be again, and shame and resentment sparked in Severus’ gut—</p><p> </p><p>—because of all things his magic could have made him, it had made him a <em>bat.</em></p><p> </p><p>Just like they had always said.</p><p> </p><p><em>My dream-self would have hated this, </em>he thought, still falling.</p><p> </p><p>And then he hit the ground.</p><p> </p><p>He woke up face-down against the wet stones of the Astronomy Tower, jaw as sore as though he’d had tetanus. The rain had stopped, and the clouds above only occasionally produced small, satisfied grumbles. He sat up, gingerly, and almost knocked heads with Black, who was crouching beside him with his hands hovering.</p><p> </p><p>“You did it!” Black proclaimed, bright and cheery, and then his face dropped. “I didn’t mean all that—” he started to say, and made as though to help Severus up.</p><p> </p><p>Severus knocked his hand back. “Fuck off, Black,” he mumbled, lips and tongue sore and swollen, and stumbled back to his dorm.</p><hr/><p>About a week later, when his dormmates were asleep, Severus crept to the bathroom and cracked open the window. It wouldn’t open very far (probably prudent, since they were on the seventeenth floor, even if Ravenclaws weren’t typed as rule-breakers), but a few inches was all he needed. He cast a spell to block the awful howling from outside, then transformed, fluttering up to the windowsill and catching sight of himself in the mirror. Not very well, since bats were hardly known for their eyesight, but he wasn’t as nearsighted as he’d thought he’d be. From the vision he’d had of himself during his transformation and the animal encyclopedia he’d had Lily get him from the library, he was a common brown pipistrelle, a little bat with ears like catchers’ mitts and a snaggle-toothed bite.</p><p> </p><p><em>Figures,</em> he thought, still a bit sour, crawling to the edge of the sill. No enviable Animagus form for him. Just a wingèd matchbox with a peep loud enough to split even the ears of the deaf.</p><p> </p><p>In all fairness, echolocation was fantastic. He’d experimented with it for hours in the dorm, then had slowly become brave enough to take it to the halls of Hogwarts, fluttering frantically between low-hanging chandeliers and vaulted ceilings, clicking like a Geiger counter until he was a better judge of distance on the move. (If he’d misjudged it a few times and had had to scrabble to cling desperately to said chandeliers with tiny clawed thumbs after he’d smacked himself into them, nobody had to know.) At least now he could tell the difference between walls and empty space by sound.</p><p> </p><p>He peered over the edged, chittered, and swallowed. There was an awful lot of empty space between him and the ground. And even common pipistrelles could, apparently, have their mouths go dry.</p><p> </p><p>He scooched back an inch to build up his nerve.</p><p> </p><p>Flying, now that had taken some getting used to. Severus had tried to mimic birds’ flight at first, with no success until he’d found animated drawings comparing the two in his reference book. It came down to a difference in anatomy. Birds’ wings were homologous with human arms, but bats’ wings were more homologous with human hands. This meant that Severus had to account for an extra articulation in the motion of the wingbeat. Instead of his wings just moving up and down, they curled in front of his face on the upstroke thanks to the bending of his elbow. And unlike a bird, he couldn’t fly in a straight line. His flight was jittery and parabolic—he had to swoop between high points.</p><p> </p><p>The most annoying thing was that he couldn’t take off from the ground like a bird could. All he could do was start flapping hard until he got enough air to get in flight. Since he didn’t like flopping on the ground like a landed fish (it was both undignified and painful), he’d realized the best way to start was to climb up somewhere high and drop.</p><p> </p><p>And unfortunately, he was somewhere quite high up right now.</p><p> </p><p>He squeezed his eyes shut, inched himself closer to the edge, and threw himself off before he could think about it. Because of the nature of echolocation, he had the luxury both of keeping his eyes closed almost the whole way down while still being able to dodge the tower’s decorative spurs, and of pretending that his rapid-fire peeping wouldn’t have been an eternal screech of terror in human form. He might be putting his life in his membrane-strung fingers, both from this and what he was about to do, but by Merlin, he was a grown-ass wizard and he’d act like it.</p><p> </p><p>He came to the Shrieking Shack after a few minutes of erratic fluttering, tucked his wings, and dove through a fist-sized hole in the dilapidated roof. He felt a twinge of distaste. Werewolf whelp or not, Lupin was a student here. Severus would have thought McGonagall or Dumbledore would have fixed the place up.</p><p> </p><p>He dug his tiny outstretched claws into the rotting wood of the wall and held himself there. Lupin was chained up to the leg of the bed as usual, but he’d stopped his Merlin-awful screaming at Severus’ first tentative chitter. He lifted his huge head and looked directly at where Severus was clinging. Severus pretended that his heart wasn’t beating too hard and fast (Lupin’s heavy ragged breathing and rank, warm scent brought back memories) and thought as crossly as he could manage that Lupin had better not eat him while Severus was trying to do something nice for once.</p><p> </p><p>He peeped again. Lupin flattened himself to the ground and growled, low and dangerous, hackles raised and teeth gleaming in the few rays of moonlight that filtered down from above.</p><p> </p><p>Severus gave another peep in response (which he would deny to his dying day was a peep of terror), and Lupin proved that werewolves could bark too, not just wail like one of the damned. Although a bark that loud might need to be classified as a roar, Severus thought, ears ringing. He pressed himself harder to the wall. So much for Black’s claim that werewolves were only aggressive toward humans.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe his peeps were hurting Lupin’s ears. Severus wished he’d gotten an Animagus form that was both more reassuring and…well, <em>bigger</em>. He wouldn’t even be a single mouthful for a werewolf. While he was at it, he might as well wish that Black hadn’t fouled up his own potion. Severus wasn’t even supposed to be the one down here, but here he was. For all the good it was doing.</p><p> </p><p>He stayed there for several hours, hanging from his back feet, chittering from afar every so often to try and give some small measure of reassurance. Lupin still growled every time. Severus wished, a little, that there were something else he could do, but the memory of that visceral fear was in the way, along with the quite reasonable fear of being eaten by something many hundreds of times larger than him. He couldn’t in good conscious still blame Lupin for an incident that had never yet occurred in this timeline (the onus for that fell squarely on Black), but then, Severus wasn’t exactly known for his good conscious.</p><p> </p><p>He stayed as long as he could, but finally he admitted to himself that he’d be wrecked if he didn’t get at least a few hours of sleep. Bats might be nocturnal but Severus sure wasn’t, despite his best efforts and the memory of many years of pulling all-nighters. He blamed this young body, which still clung stubbornly to its circadian rhythm, and which in all probability required more sleep for growth and development than Severus was willing to give it.</p><p> </p><p>He chittered one last time and crawled back out the hole in the roof. Lupin barked at his departure and started howling again as soon as Severus’ tiny membranous backside disappeared from view.</p><p> </p><p><em>See you next month</em>, Severus thought, letting out a tiny batty sigh, and, closing his eyes, dropped from the roof, swooped, and began the arduous process of gaining enough altitude to get back to his bathroom window on the seventeenth floor of Ravenclaw Tower. The things he did for people who would never know it.</p><p> </p><p>At least that, between lifetimes, still hadn’t changed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading. I appreciate every review. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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